How Monte Vista Properties Solved Inspection Coverage Gaps With a Scalable Property Management Solution

Senior Property Manager with Monte Vista Properties, Salvador Vasquez – a residential property management veteran with over 12 years in the industry – thought he had seen everything in the book. Good tenants, bad tenants, units with no issues, and units with lots of issues. But, Salvador figured… “Hey, if they pay on time and there’s no issues with the condition of the unit then there’s no problem right?”

Well, there was a problem… a $50,000 problem

We had a tenant who had been with us for five years. Paid on time. No issues… come to find out his house was raided [by police], and he had about 150 marijuana plants inside the home.

“If you think you know what’s happening inside your homes just because tenants pay on time—you don’t. RentCheck gives you that visibility without slowing growth

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Monte Vista Properties was charged approximately $50,000 in fines and penalties from the authorities as a result of the raid on their property. It was an eye opener for Salvador and the team, one that left them wondering how they could not just avoid something like this happening again, but make sure it never happened again.

Property Inspection Problems Big & Small

“As we grew, physically getting into every home just wasn’t realistic anymore.”

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The core issue wasn’t how to inspect—it was coverage.

The grow operation was an extreme (and expensive) example, but there were more and more problems piling up as coverage of their property portfolio near and far became more difficult. Getting access to homes can be hard. More units meant more property inspections falling through the cracks and it was getting tougher to keep things straight and make sure nothing was being missed. Salvador tried improving internal processes and using AppFolio property management software to the best of the team’s abilities with the tools they had: emails, iPhone reminders, manual scheduling, physically entering homes when possible.

But again, that pesky clock… there were only 24 hours and as Monte Vista Properties was taking on more and more units it just wasn’t going to be possible to get to every little thing. It required too much staff time, left too many blind spots, and was too easy to sometimes miss inspections in AppFolio entirely.

“When we were smaller, it was easier to drive by the properties and have control of what was going on. As we grew, that just wasn’t realistic anymore.”

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A Property Management Inspection Solution for Growing Portfolios

Monte Vista Properties had never heard of RentCheck and didn’t know it integrated into AppFolio’s software platform – or for that matter, the concept of tenant led inspections and technology led property management solutions – until one day they were onboarding a new construction and development team. The builders and management teams were already using RentCheck for warranty inspections, and suggested that Salvador and his team try RentCheck to improve their inspection operations in AppFolio’s platform with tenant-led inspection software so they could add more units as they scaled faster.

“We took about 30 minutes to talk through what he had experienced with it, and then we decided to reach out. “After what happened [with the marijuana grow operation], the owner of Monte Vista said, ‘Let’s give this thing a try.’”

Monte Vista Properties was dealing with operational bottlenecks and problems that all property managers do as they tried to grow too fast without the proper safeguards, solutions, and property management growth tools in place. Issues like:

• Inconsistent execution
• Falling behind
• Summer leasing bottlenecks
• Staff burnout
• No look-ahead scheduling
• Spreadsheet chaos

The staff were simply spending too much time driving from property to property, day after day, month after month. And on top of all this… they were still mis

“RentCheck gave us a way to put our eyes in every home.”

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RentCheck – The Tenant-Led Property Inspection Solution

Is your property management business growing rapidly? Struggling with missed rental property inspections? Is AppFolio’s current inspection tool getting in the way?  Is staff getting access to all homes proving impossible and resulting in missed inspections? Are you looking to have confidence that your properties are in good condition and so you can continue to add more?

Check out RentCheck property management growth tools pricing, view a demo for our AppFolio integration, or reach out to our property management solutions team today and find a way to get every inspection done with RentCheck.