AppFolio vs CoStar Real Estate Manager

• It helps us to keep the Maintenance side of the business very organized. Anyone from our organization can go in and know exactly where a work order is in process (new, waiting, assigned, completed). We know if a work order has been printed and if the tenants are still having an issue we know to contact the Maintenance team. We can build on existing work orders by adding a "-2" or "-3" work order and keep track of the history when managing ongoing issues.
• AppFolio makes it easy to see exactly what tenants owe and categorizes charges/credits efficiently on their ledgers. We can tell if there are water/sewer charges, pet fees, electricity allocations, late fees, security deposits, etc... It's all easy to follow and understand and it set up in chronological order.
• I also utilize the Reports and Letters section of this software program quite often. It's great to have a uniform format which helps us maintain the professional element by remaining consistent and accurate. It's easy to run a report with tenant information at a certain property for maintenance and send select tenants letters at a large property without everyone being included. It's very intuitive and the formatting has definitely improved over the past two years I've been using the program.

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• For my role within the company, I find CoStars database of historical information very helpful. Previous users, owners, financing lien holders, tax information and county data are things I look for on a daily basis.

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• The calendar needs a lot of improvement. Currently it will sync with Google calendar but I would like to see it sync directly with my Outlook calendar.
• It would be extremely beneficial if lease expiration dates would post to the calendar OR if AppFolio would notify me in advance that a lease expiration is upcoming.
• I would like some sort of notification when an on-line payment is made.
• The ability to send group text messages and emails would be an added luxury.
• I would like to have the ability to add or take away from the Dashboard.

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• In our market (Portland, OR), not enough users implement the tools that could make CoStar so much better. For example, I specialize in medical but brokers and owners don't take the time to mark medical as an approved use in their buildings so I have to search much longer and cross-reference the data by contacting the brokers directly.
• I find it really annoying that when I download documents CoStar doesn't use smart technology to automatically name my files. It is especially irritating since every piece of marketing we post to CoStar has a relevant file name yet when we download the same file we have to rename it.

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• AppFolio has converted prospective clients to actual clients once they saw how my company could use the program to communicate with on-site property management teams and improve the communication and budgeting process.
• AppFolio is expensive, especially for a small company, so that may have had some negative impact on the ROI.
• Overall, AppFolio has also helped improve our ability as a company to communicate with asset manager levels.

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• Since CoStar has linked with LoopNet we have had fewer bad data calls. By which I mean old data from LoopNet that was available to the general public is now more regularly updated through CoStar so we have less confusion with our clients.

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