Great minds think alike

What do Manhattan's two newest rental communities have in common?

Tower 31 and 88 Leonard St. sign up for On-Site services

Starting the waterfall

What inspired On-Site? Real Estate Weekly asked me to tell the story of how we came to be. Our first step was to learn:

we studied the steps involved in renting an apartment, and how this workflow differed among companies. Often, software is designed by programmers who have no idea what the end-user actually does on a day-to-day basis.

User-friendly programs are vital for the property management field. In many markets, properties are run by owners with little time to spend on learning new software. Furthermore, employees - particularly at the onsite leasing level - move among jobs and companies quite a bit, so the fact that minimal training is required to use On-Site.com gives new users the ability to be up-and-running quickly.

More on how we built our software to "waterfall" from task to task: Getting to Know the User-friendly Side of Technology.

Are you in good hands?

We sure hope that our users never need them, but our online document management is a great asset for disaster recovery!

For example:

Last year, one of our On-Site.com clients, an 82-unit rental complex in northern California, had a nearly disastrous fire in the records room of the management office. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the office computer and many leases and tenant records were lost. Because the client's On-Site.com account is accessible from any computer with an Internet connection, the manager had immediate access to the complex's apartment and tenant data. Only web-based management can provide such a safety net.

More details in Paperless Property Leasing Becoming a Reality, an article from today's Real Estate Weekly.

Avalon enters Manhattan, brokers tremble

After Inman News mentioned that AvalonBay's first Manhattan rental project was using On-Site, Property Grunt, a New York City broker, predicted the demise of real estate agents.

This is obviously not our intention - we just make their business lives easier. As Inman says, instant background checks, lease preparation and other services - that voodoo that they do so well.