“It absolutely frees up my time.”

Devin Elder
CEO and Founder, DJE Texas Management

Partnering with AppFolio to accelerate growth

The company was founded in 2012 and initially ran its entire operation manually. But when their portfolio grew to include some landmark San Antonio multifamily properties like The Helix with its 400 units, or The Lennox with 256 units, it became obvious that managing all aspects of the business, from communications to maintenance and staffing could turn into major headaches without the right tools to do the job.

We sat down with the DJE Texas Management Team to hear how they decided to partner with AppFolio Investment Manager to further their growth.

What was life at DJE like before AppFolio Investment Manager?

“It was extremely painful doing everything manually, but I'm glad I had that experience for the contrast,” says Devin Elder, the CEO and Founder of DJE Texas Management Group, “we were experiencing a tremendous amount of growth, with investor capital coming in, and every investor position got completely jumbled. That was too much of a pain point — we said ‘we cannot operate like this’ and that’s when we made the shift.” After a thorough search for the right SaaS partners, they came across AppFolio and recognized immediately what they could offer each other.

How was the experience getting up and running with AppFolio?

“It was literally the easiest transition I have ever experienced as far as technology is concerned.” says Justin Liggitt, manager of Investor Relations and Marketing.

How has AppFolio Investment Manager enabled growth for DJE Texas Management?

After getting up and running with the software, the team was able to begin experiencing its benefits.

“AppFolio has given us the ability to do two things we would not have managed without it,” explains Elder, “the ability to grow while keeping track of investments plus the ability to keep our team lean.”

AppFolio’s ability to automate the team’s workflows has allowed them to grow with minimal overhead. “We run pretty lean, and a big part of that is due to the automation. We keep our payroll low, and it reduces the amount of redundancy and confusion very low.”

Does the team leverage AppFolio’s investor relations and fundraising focused tools?

“AppFolio Investment Manager allows me to handle the biggest part of my job, which is fundraising,” says Justin Liggitt, “I’m able to use the technology to deliver our projects to close with a bow on it to the rest of our team.”

“The thing I like the most about the software is that, while it integrates a lot of CRM and communications functionality for investors, it also handles all the operational aspects of investor relationship management. It creates an investor experience that is completely seamless once they decide to move forward with us. I wouldn’t be able to do that without AppFolio Investment Manager.”

“It absolutely frees up my time” says Elder.

“Personally, I’m not even really in AppFolio most of the time. That was initially not an easy transition for me” says the Founder and CEO. “For me to be able to sleep at night and know that distributions are getting processed, that investors have all the information they need, or even if we’re doing a big capital raise, knowing that it’s being handled by the team — that’s a huge win.”

“To be able to grow and implement AppFolio Investment Manager, and hand it off to the team: that’s nirvana for me.”