Published on June 2nd, 2025
By Stacy Holden
Despite a historic climb in rent prices over the past several years and surging demand for units nationwide, today’s property managers are contending with a host of challenges, from rising material costs, to cutthroat competition, and perhaps even some belt-tightening efforts amid wider economic concerns.
Recent research from AppFolio Property Manager — our NAA Property Management Industry Pulse — outlines the many challenges facing single-family, affordable, and multifamily property rental operators amid a high-demand but revenue-hungry market. The report, which polled more than 2,000 employees of U.S. property management companies, also documents the struggles property management businesses face with “shiny” new proptech solutions. Many new solutions promise time and cost savings but ultimately prove to be clunky and inadequate due to poor integrations with existing (legacy) property management software.
AppFolio understands that truly efficient business software should provide a clear return on investment (ROI), boost employee productivity and satisfaction, and ultimately unlock revenue to grow the business. Our data shows, however, that many property management businesses continue to struggle in these areas.
Proptech: A Key Component in Scaling Property Management Operations
As external economic pressures increase, it’s not surprising that operational efficiency (76%, up from 63% in 2021) and revenue maximization (61%, up from 48% in 2021) were the two most commonly cited challenges in recent years. A superior, seamless, and sophisticated property management software platform is the single most critical factor in solving both of these concerns.
Unfortunately, many rental operators today may fail to see tech-enabled benefits because of ineffective or dated property management software. Additionally, these core property management systems are unable to effectively integrate with partners providing industry-leading technology solutions.
What’s more, there may be a disconnect between property management executives and frontline staff in perception of the effectiveness of the tools they’ve deployed. In fact, frontline staff “on the ground” are more likely than executives to consider innovation/technology a top challenge, which means their potential struggles with the business’ technology may not be reaching decision-makers.
And so the efficiency gap in tech adoption persists, meaning property management businesses are not yet realizing the full power of their tools. Still, property management teams need to adopt the mindset that technology fosters success not only in one area, but throughout the entire business — streamlining workflows including payments and maintenance requests, enabling virtual showings, and more. All allow property management teams to pivot to other critical activities that ultimately impact the bottom line positively.
In many ways, this draws parallels to the restaurant industry, coping with — and eventually growing from — the changes forced by COVID-19 and “going digital” (fulfilling orders and deliveries, or automating elements of wait service). While at first, restaurants may have viewed this as an impassable hurdle, these services went from “confusing” to essential. Similarly, with property management systems, technology is an enabler, not a hindrance.
Is the Talent Market Normalizing?
While The Great Resignation continues to be a topic of discussion within our industry, there appears to be some normalization in staffing, as organizations continue to make adjustments. Such change has now brought other economic hurdles for property management businesses. Illustrating this point: Human resources, staffing and recruitment were cited as the top challenge by 74% of respondents in 2021 , but in 2023 that figure dropped down to 42%. Instead, inflationary pressures have likely elevated efficiency and revenue as key concerns.
But effective teams are still at the heart of any successful business, and building or retaining talent will always pose new challenges. Luckily, technology has a central role in making the day-to-day easier for employees and attracting top talent as well.
For instance, training a new employee to track payments via index cards (yes, people still use them!) or even via Excel (versus a modern property management software to automate payments) is the equivalent to offering a new employee a typewriter. Sounds ludicrous, right?
For example, training a new employee to manually track payments via index cards or Excel would feel like the modern-day equivalent of asking your new team member to work on a typewriter instead of a computer.
The efficiency and scalability that a modern property management platform enables in transforming a business is a night-and-day difference compared to manual operations.
Luckily, the perks of technology in real estate are making property management jobs both easier and more engaging, and so more desirable. If teams are empowered with the right tools, there’s no doubt they can also make an impact on residents’ lives, including positively influencing access to housing, for example.
Still, the bottom line is that to keep talent in place, our industry needs to truly elevate the employee experience by providing tech, training, and tools.
Effective Integrations
Property management companies need their proptech to unlock productivity and leave customers satisfied. Yet, our data shows that some 39% of managers are unhappy with the integration between their existing tech stack and new services meant to streamline work or enhance their customer experience.
This challenge varies greatly when looking at responses from single-family owners versus multifamily property management respondents. Only 20% of pure multifamily residential respondents ranked “Implementing New Technology and Innovation” as one of the top three most important challenges they faced in 2023. That figure was doubled to 40% of pure single-family operators when ranking technology and innovation challenges. However, the task of seamlessly integrating new technology — without disrupting business operations — remains relevant and critical for both single-family and multifamily housing management teams.
Some property managers continue to run legacy software developed in the 1980s and which, in some cases, may even be based on several different database infrastructures. The system architecture of these outdated solutions causes faulty, and frustrating partner integrations and makes a single source of truth an impossibility. AppFolio Property Manager is instead powered by flexibility, impressive functionality, and ease of access, making it true software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology.
In fact, we believe that certification — meaning potential partners are vetted and approved — is a necessary step for any software integration, along with true partnership. Integrations that we have included in AppFolio Stack™ are the result of close collaboration between our development teams prioritizing the experience of the end user.
The platform enables AppFolio Property Manager users to provide specialized solutions for those managing complex portfolios. In it, we have integrated thoughtful solutions where partners have direct access to collaborate with our developers. This means they have the tools and information needed to develop stable integrations atop a strong, reliable system architecture.
It is an approach we feel will help change the mindset around integrations and eliminate inefficiencies that our customers have experienced with other software providers and vendors.
Rental operators have a true partner in AppFolio Property Manager. In fact, even prior to the AppFolio Stack launch, 70% of our users said they remain satisfied with the technology’s ability to help them address key challenges, compared to only 51% of users of other property management solutions. This is an area we have always prioritized, and now we are bringing the same approach to our integrations marketplace.
Delivering on the Tech Experience
While rental operators increasingly embrace efficiencies fueled by technology, the industry has a ways to go in standardizing such use. Nevertheless, our data suggests property management companies are addressing today’s challenges head-on, and time- and cost-saving platforms like AppFolio Property Manager may be key in avoiding new hurdles.
It is also clear that a substantial portion of renters now overwhelmingly choose to lease from companies that provide the best experience. While this has generational tendencies, all of today’s renters simply expect more. So, what better way for property management businesses to stand out than providing residents and employees a central platform with industry-leading tools and capabilities? It will no doubt deliver a satisfying experience from start to finish.
