Angela Brainard is one of three property managers at First Choice Property Management. She manages 190 of the company’s 500 single-family homes, spread across four counties surrounding Fort Worth.
In 2018, Angela and her team at First Choice switched from Rently to Tenant Turner. At first. the driving factor was cost-effectiveness.
After seven years with Tenant Turner, she added a key integration, and the benefits for First Choice began to extend beyond price.
Company Name |
First Choice Property Management |
Market |
Fort Worth, Texas |
Units |
~500 |
Property Types |
Single-family residential properties |
Challenge |
Manual, inefficient leasing processesunmanageable workloadswasted Hourslost leads |
Before Tenant Turner and Rently, Angela and her colleagues scheduled showings manually. They relied on sticky notes, email back-and-forths, calendars, and hours on the phone to get the job done.
Between manually coordinating showings and driving across four counties, the workload was overwhelming.
“Before we even started [using] CodeBox, when I only had about a hundred properties, it was hectic because you had to schedule depending on zip codes or who, what, when, and where. Now, I love not having to do that at all,” Angela said.
She doesn’t have to do it at all because Tenant Turner handles it through a self-service phone system. Tenant Turner instantly responds to tenant lead emails and calls, screens based on custom criteria, schedules viewings, and facilitates access for self-showings.
Since implementing Tenant Turner, First Choice has moved to almost exclusively self-showings, while tenant-occupied property viewings remain in-person. But with Tenant Turner, Angela can make even those showings even easier.
“The only properties that I show that are tenant occupied. I just have Tenant Turner set up the option of in-person showings. I don’t have to go, ‘I need your email, your phone number, you need to send me your ID.’ Tenant Turner captures that, and all I have to do is set up the showing.” - Angela Brainard, Property Manager
Most of First Choice’s owners own just one property. So the team has to keep separate owners updated for each active listing. That used to mean (at-least) weekly phone calls with owners.
To that end, Tenant Turner’s automated weekly owner reports have been a game-changer.
“The fact that you have the owner's report integrated and all you have to do is send it has just been… a lot of time saved,” Angela said. “Owners aren’t calling me every Monday anymore, asking how many people are in all the properties. They already got the information from us.”
Also, when she discusses listings with her owners, Tenant Turner’s reports provide her with more concrete information, including showing data and prospect feedback. This makes it easier to make pricing recommendations and have conversations about necessary property improvements based on hard data.
First Choice’s operations recently took yet another step forward when the team added the integration with AppFolio. This eliminated double data entry and accelerated leasing velocity.
“Boy, that has been absolutely so nice to not have to post it in AppFolio, then pull all that and do it in Tenant Turner too,” Angela said.
“All that” are the listing details, photos, and pricing, which automatically syncs between the two systems now that the integration is set up.
“That’s been a really huge thing,” she explained. “Our photographer goes to the property and those pictures are ready on a Friday… Those pictures are going out right away, not waiting for me to come back into the office on Monday. Which happened a lot prior to the integration.”
The time-savings adds up.
In fact, Angela estimated that the integration saves 20 to 30 minutes per property. With her usual load of 13 or more active listings, that frees up several hours each week for inspections, make-ready oversight, and other priorities.
For First Choice, the Tenant Turner and the AppFolio integration is a key part of a more adaptable, more scalable foundation for the business.
With only three property managers and one agent overseeing nearly 500 homes, First Choice Property Management proves how the right technology and the right people together create a lean, scalable team ready to compete in any market.
Are you still using sticky notes and spreadsheets to manage your property management business? Get organized with Tenant Turner.