Company Name
SVN/Toomey Properties
Door Count
900
Portfolio Type
Multifamily
Buildium Customer Since
2022
Company Name
SVN/Toomey Properties
Door Count
900
Portfolio Type
Multifamily
Buildium Customer Since
2022
When Justin Toomey, owner of SVN/Toomey Properties, in Mobile, AL decided to take on multifamily property management, he resolved to keep one principle at the heart of his business: quality of service.
It drives every part of his business—even how he’s scaling up. Right now, he manages multifamily units in three states—Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida—but none of those properties are further than an hour drive from his headquarters.
“We need to stay within about an hour’s drive time to maintain the quality that we have,” says Toomey. “I’m not willing to go anywhere further than that and risk the quality because it’s just too difficult to do that when we’re in different states.”
When Toomey needed software to help his business grow from 34 to about 900 doors, maintaining that high level of service was number one on his list of must-haves.
Toomey started his brokerage company in 2019. “When I started, it was just me and an office,” he recalls. “It wasn’t very much fun. So, shortly thereafter, I decided I needed to get some brokers in.”
Toomey hired a broker who, after a rough couple of years during the pandemic, encouraged him to expand to multifamily property management.
In January 2022, he launched his property management division, with two contracts and 34 units.
He estimates that the company brought on about 100 doors that first year, but those doors didn’t come easily.
“I made every mistake you could make,” says Toomey. “I messed everything up you could mess up. But I just continued to push, figuring out better ways to do it.”
For the first seven months, says Toomey, they lost money on property management. Toomey needed a way to bring on more doors without sacrificing the personalized service he provided.
“I treat every property like I own it,” says Toomey. And he wanted it to stay that way.
To do that, he had to find a way to maximize efficiency in processes such as leasing, maintenance, and accounting.
Around the same time, Toomey brought on Buildium to help him manage his properties. Right away, the software helped him reduce the time and effort his staff put into manual processes, and minimize human error.
“That was one of the biggest things that Buildium provided when I first started growing—the management side,” he says. “The software allows me to correct virtually any mistake that is made, whether by me or an employee. And that’s huge, because again, I have not met a single perfect person yet.”
He walked us through the features that have helped his company achieve the biggest gains in efficiency.
In particular, the Resident Center helps Toomey maintain his high level of service for his tenants.
“The tenant portal is awesome,” he says. “It’s very user-friendly.
Toomey finds it particularly helpful for his many older residents, who tend to be less tech savvy.
“We’ll literally bring them into our office, download the app for them, and show them how it works. And once we’ve done that one time, it’s so easy for them to use. They’ve got it.”
The portal allows tenants to report maintenance issues, as well. As each issue comes in, Toomey can assign tickets to the right vendors and track each ticket through Buildium’s dashboard.
“There are always problems with multifamily,” he says. “There’s always stuff breaking. If the tenant can go online, put in the work order, and take and attach photos of the issue to the work order task, then we can see it before we ever go.”
For example, he says, if there is a leak in a pipe under a sink, his team can see the pipe and get the right materials for the job before they even step foot in the unit.
Using Buildium’s leasing tools provided a high level of convenience for prospective tenants and cut the amount of time his staff was handling, delivering, and filing leases.
Toomey enumerated the many steps his staff had to go through previously to get a lease signed. “Having to print the lease, get it ready, staple it, let them come pick it up—or take it to them, which depending where the property is, could be 30, 45 minutes round trip, it was a nightmare,” he says. “But when you do it right up front, any issue, any question, you can answer immediately . . . it just makes life easier for everybody.”
All of those features are invaluable to Toomey, but, he says, his favorite Buildium tool is the owner portal. It allows his owners to access reports, leases, work orders, and anything else pertaining to their property at any time, even on the go via the mobile app.
“We still put out monthly reports if they need it. We do deep dives, do calls, all that. But they don’t have to wait for me or the 15th of the month to come out with a report,” he says. “They can check it out any time they want.”
Toomey says they’re now one of the leading multifamily property management companies in their market—and all of their owners have expressed their satisfaction with Buildium.
“Every one of my owners has liked the software,” he says. “They’ve all commented on it and they’ve all used other software, and Buildium has been their favorite.”
Ease of use has been the number one comment he’s gotten from his team.
“Everything is laid out in front of us in one location with all the files, all the notes, the lease ledger, all the history is right there for any employee or myself to see,” says Toomey. “And we can share that information, like the lease with the tenant so they don’t have to call us and ask us to bring them a lease. And that’s a huge time-saving tool, as well.”
Toomey credits that ease of use for helping him grow.
“I feel like if I had software that was a little bit more difficult to use, I don’t think I would have grown as quickly.”
