🌱 May Matters: Move-Outs, Momentum & Yes — We're Breaking Up With AppFolio

Every month I share what's actually on our plate — not the polished version, the real one. If something we're doing helps you run a tighter operation, steal it. That's the point.

Let me set some context before I get into May.

A sizable chunk of our portfolio is student rentals. That's not a complaint — it's a business model we've built around intentionally. But it means our calendar doesn't look like everyone else's. May isn't just a busy month for us. It's the month. The one everything else in the year gets organized around.

If your portfolio is mostly long-term residential or commercial, May might feel like a regular month with warmer weather. For us, it's controlled chaos with a very specific, very unforgiving deadline.

Here's the reality of student housing that doesn't get talked about enough: your outgoing tenants move out May 21st. Your incoming tenants move in June 1st.

Ten days.

Ten days to inspect every unit, document every damage, coordinate every cleaner, schedule every repair, fix every paint scuff, replace every broken blind, deep clean every bathroom, and hand over keys to an entirely new set of tenants — who have already signed leases, already paid deposits, and are already loading the moving truck.

There is no buffer. There is no grace period. The lease says June 1st and June 1st is what it means.

So when I say May is the month everything gets organized around — that's why. We don't get the luxury of a slow transition. Every vendor, every system, every process we've built over 15 years exists to survive that ten-day window without losing our minds or our reputation.

The companies still scrambling in May are the ones who thought April could wait. It can't. It never could.

Here's where we are, what's coming, and — stick around for this one — the decision we've been sitting on that some of you are going to have opinions about.

🎓 What May Actually Looks Like

Community Appearance & Compliance

Yard cleanup notices go out this month. Every year. Still necessary every year.

Students move out and outdoor spaces take the hit — abandoned furniture, trash bags by the door, bikes locked to railings since October. Predictable, which means preventable. When someone pulls up to their new place on June 1st and it still looks like the last group left an hour ago, that's not the first impression we're going for.

Exterior Inspection Round 2

April's inspection was about finding everything. May is about following through.

We laid out why April is the only smart window for exterior inspections back in March — catch repairs before vendors book solid, use that data to negotiate real pricing across your portfolio. An inspection without follow-up is just a list. May is when we track what changed, what got fixed, and what got quietly labeled "later." Later is now.

Vendor Bids & Cost Control

Lawn care is locked in. Vendors confirmed across every property, no gaps.

Now we're collecting bids for exterior repairs and improvements before the summer rush makes contractors both scarce and expensive. Same logic as HVAC preventative maintenance — the systems failing in July aren't sudden failures. They're the result of maintenance that got pushed to "when things slow down." Things don't slow down. You already know that.

Pest Prevention Is Running

Spring moisture plus vacating units is a reliable recipe for pest issues. Crumbs behind appliances, trash left too long, gaps from freeze-thaw cycles — it compounds fast.

Who's actually responsible — tenant or owner — is something worth having sorted before the calls come in. That article also ties directly back to the exterior inspection checklist — the same gaps letting cold air in during February are letting insects in during May. One inspection, two problems handled.

Move-In Automation Is Already Running

Here's what makes the ten-day window genuinely brutal: incoming tenants aren't moving in "sometime in June." They're moving in June 1st. Same day. Across most of the portfolio. Simultaneously.

Utility setup, lease execution, key handover, move-in inspections — all happening while your team is still wrapping up move-out documentation from ten days prior. If that process is still manual, your staff is underwater. Full stop.

Sixteen months ago we automated the entire utility setup workflow. Tenants get step-by-step guidance, automated reminders run until confirmation is uploaded, and staff verifies before move-in day. It's since generated $2,980 in referral commissions as a side effect. The real value is that nobody on our team is chasing utility confirmations during the ten most intense days of our year. Build it once, let it run.

✅ April: What We Actually Got Done

🌿 Lawn care — finalized. Every property covered, every vendor confirmed. Took more coordination than it should have but it's done. We go into the ten-day window without it hanging over us.

🦟 Pest prevention — already running. Tenant communications sent. Entry points from exterior inspections being addressed. If you haven't sent a seasonal reminder to your tenants yet — this week is your window before move-out chaos makes it an afterthought. Here's the breakdown on responsibilities if you need a starting point.

🌡️ HVAC filters — on schedule. Changed every 90 days through our Tenant Benefit Package. Boring and preventative — exactly right. An HVAC failure on June 3rd for a brand new tenant who moved in June 1st is not the welcome we want. Why this matters more than most operators realize.

📱 Saved 60% on Cell Phone & Internet. Switched from Verizon to AT&T across the operation. Sixty percent. On a line item most people never think to audit. Curious how we did it? Let's talk →

💡 Growth Tactic: Stop Hiding Your Listings

List your properties everywhere — Zillow, Apartments.com, Trulia, every local platform your market uses. For student housing, students search early and share listings in group chats. More platforms, more chances to be the property that gets shared.

More doors. Less vacancy. Simple — just requires someone to actually do it.

And that's usually the real problem. Not knowing what to do — having the bandwidth to do it. Our VA team handles the exact work that's eating your day: listing management, tenant communications, maintenance coordination, lease renewals, move-in and move-out documentation, and owner reporting. All of it. Done by people who already know property management — not someone you have to train from scratch during your busiest month of the year.

See how it works →

🖥️ One More Thing: We're Breaking Up With AppFolio

Eleven years.

That's how long we've been on AppFolio. Workflows built around it, staff trained on it, SOPs written inside it. And we are — methodically, eyes wide open — actively searching for something else.

Go ahead. Raise an eyebrow.

But before you defend it, answer this honestly: when did you last actually evaluate whether your software still fits where your business is going? Not browse a review page at midnight. Actually demo, test a sandbox, push hard on trust accounting integrity, API access, and what data migration truly costs you in time and money.

We did. Here's what kept coming up:

Support that didn't move at the speed our operation required. At scale, a multi-day ticket response isn't a support strategy — it's a liability. Especially when you're ten days out from handing keys to hundreds of new tenants.

Standard features locked behind tiers. Eleven years in and still being upsold on tools that should have been included from day one. The industry has moved. The pricing model hasn't.

Automation costs extra. In 2026. We wrote about where AI in property management is actually heading. Running a platform that treats automation as an add-on isn't a direction we can keep going.

API walls that block integrations. We're building connected systems. Closed ecosystems are a ceiling we're not interested in.

This isn't a complaint. It's a business decision about fit. After eleven years, we've outgrown it. The mistake would be staying out of habit.

The Search Is On — Talk To Us

We're in active demos, testing sandboxes, asking hard questions. No decision yet — but when we land, we'll share everything here.

In the meantime, we want your intel:

• 🔄 Switched from AppFolio? What are you on now and would you go back?
• ✅ Still on AppFolio? What's keeping you there?
• 💡 Never used it? What are you running and do you love it?

Fifteen years in this business taught us the best advice never comes from a sales rep. It comes from people who've already lived it. Drop it in the comments.

📰 Industry Pulse

🏢 Rent growth is back — Four straight months of gains through March 2026, sitting at ~$1,723. Stabilizing demand after a slower late 2025. Read the data here.

📉 Renters are staying put — Nearly half of U.S. renters are cost-burdened. Lower churn, stronger retention, continued demand. Take care of your good tenants — a single turnover costs $2,000–$5,000 when you factor in vacancy, repairs, and re-leasing. See the numbers here.

🏡 Institutional money keeps flowing — Large investors still targeting multifamily and build-to-rent. Long-term confidence in rental housing fundamentals hasn't moved. See the numbers here.

🤖 AI is reshaping operations — CBRE and Cushman & Wakefield are already using it to cut manual work. Here's what that looks like at every scale.

📚 Must-Reads From This Month

🪲 Spring Pest Control for Property Managers: Tenant vs. Owner Responsibilities

At 10:46 a.m. yesterday, spring officially arrived. And with it comes longer days, melting snow, and that fresh start we’ve all been waiting for—right in the middle of March Madness. But in property management, it also signals the start of mud, moisture, and a wave of

PMA Monthly ForecastRegine Collins

🌡️ The HVAC Problems You Can Prevent Right Now

After years of managing properties, one thing stays consistent—HVAC issues rarely start when the system fails. They start earlier, usually with something simple that gets overlooked. A filter that wasn’t changed. Airflow that slowly became restricted. A system that had to work harder than it should have. Spring

PMA Monthly ForecastRegine Collins

⚡The Move-In Automation That Made Us $2,980

Utility setup is one of the most common headaches during tenant move-ins. Tenants forget to transfer utilities, wait until the last minute, or simply don’t know which providers service the property. This often leads to staff chasing tenants for confirmations, unnecessary follow-ups, and sometimes utilities staying in the owner’

PMA Monthly ForecastRegine Collins

🏠 7 Signs You Might Retire Early Because of AI in Property Management

🚀 See How AI Is Transforming Property Management 1️⃣ AI Handles Your Routine Leasing Tasks If AI can respond to inquiries, schedule showings, and screen applicants without human input, your day-to-day leasing work may soon require minimal involvement. 2️⃣ Maintenance Requests Are Fully Automated Vendors dispatched, predictive maintenance flagged, and requests

PMA Monthly ForecastRegine Collins

April Exterior Inspection Checklist: Smart Owners Beat the Rush

Every month, we share what’s on our to-do list for the following month, so you can be better prepared and upgrade your processes. April up north is the earliest opportunity to plan for yearly exterior repair needs. Unlike the south, we can only do outside work safely and comfortably for

PMA Monthly ForecastRegine Collins

📅 May Events Worth Your Time

🏢 MAA Expo 2026 — May 7 📍 Boston, MA — One of the largest multifamily PM gatherings in the country. 1,600+ attendees, 170+ booths.

🏙️ ULI Spring Meeting 2026 — May 5–7 📍 Nashville, TN — Capital markets, investment trends, development. 4,500+ industry peers.

🤖 Future PropTech Miami — May 12–13 📍 Miami, FL — AI, automation, smart buildings. On our radar given the software search.

PMA Clients: Your pre-inspection process is in the portal — built specifically for this stretch of the year.