RealPage ActiveBuilding resident portal debuts eCommerce platform that drives incremental property yield, improves resident experience

RealPage Inc. has delivered its initial eCommerce platform for residents via its ActiveBuilding resident portal solution. The solution is purpose-built to enhance the resident experience and drive incremental yield from amenities, spaces, services and events. A radically redesigned, custom-branded mobile app facilitates all transactions by enabling residents to make purchases and manage apartment-related needs easily and conveniently. 

These advances deliver benefits to property owners and managers with proven success in beta testing. Residents can reserve and pay for amenities, spaces and events directly, including parking, guest suites, self-storage, clubhouses, conference rooms, yoga classes, cleaners, child care, dog walkers and more. 

PMCs earn income from assets they already have and through third-party service providers. So far, clients have monetized 25 different amenities and rentables with guest suites and parking generating the most incremental revenue with one client reporting over US$150 per unit per year in revenue lift. 

PMCs can build their brand by custom-branding the app with a property’s logo, color palette and photography. This also makes it simple to provide a community’s branded resident portal to residents. Residents simply enter their community name in the app store and the custom-branded app will appear. 

Residents can make all reservations and purchases from the app through a simple, end-to-end shopping cart experience. They can also renew their leases with just a few clicks. Residents were 2 to 3 percent more likely to renew according to beta test results.

“Property owners and managers have long faced the challenge of supplementing base rent because of market conditions, changing laws and competitors who are better set up to provide eCommerce,” says Jon Pastor, RealPage SVP Consumer Solutions. “Our new eCommerce platform and custom-branded app leapfrog that. Residents will jump at the chance to rent amenities and pay for services and events if they’re a click away. They love the convenience, too! By enabling residents to perform these tasks themselves, there is an added benefit of freeing staff to focus on other core duties. For example, during the beta test, property staff saved an average of 16.5 hours previously spent processing rent checks.”