Customer Story

A real estate investor’s perspective on the AppFolio Investor Portal

AppFolio Investment Manager case studies are usually based on interviews with our customers: real estate investment managers whose clients are real estate investors. This time, we decided to interview the client of a customer to hear their side of the story.

We sat down with DJE Texas Management’s investor Christopher Fincham to learn more about how he leverages the DJE’s AppFolio Investor Portal to access important investment information and documents.

What specifically about DJE first drew you to them?

The expansive strategy between multifamily syndications, their track record, as well as some of the new stuff that DJE is doing with land investments—it was just really attractive to me. It was my first time working with a syndicator.

And were they already using AppFolio Investment Manager software to provide an Investor Portal at the time? Was it your first time using it?

Yeah, the PPM came through the investor portal, the operating agreement, and then all the documentation that I signed. So before, during and after, I was in AppFolio.

I had already interacted with AppFolio from the property management side, because several property managers that I worked with use AppFolio Property Manager. Some other platforms that I've worked with...aren't good. And I tend to really enjoy working inside of AppFolio from the property management perspective.

“If they don’t have a portal, I won’t invest with them.”

Christopher Fincham
Limited Partner of DJE Texas Management

Were you able to get everything you needed from the Investor Portal pretty quickly?

Yeah, from my perspective, it's really easy—I didn't have to do a lot of thinking. I think the benefit of the portfolio management system is really the simplicity of it. I mean, you guys expose your customers to the bare bones, the minimum that we need to see. And it just makes my life really easy.

When you're logging into the Investor Portal, what feature do you like to use the most?

I would say the dashboard. I mean, it's not really a platform that I feel I need to visit very often. So number one, it's really simple when I log in, but I honestly only check in when I'm bored, or if it's tax time, or if I need to. I get automated emails, notifications that a new investment has been placed into the system so that I can look at it. And that's one of the coolest things ever, because I know exactly where to go when I want to look at those new opportunities.

How has your experience been hearing about new investing opportunities from DJE via the Investor Portal?

It's good. I mean, it's straightforward, I get quarterly reports for a couple of the opportunities, the projects that DJE is working on. And whenever there's a new opportunity, I also know that everything that I need to see is immediately available to me, from a document perspective.

What are some of the advantages you find of using the Investor Portal?

I get my K-1s around tax time, right on time. I know exactly when they get there—I get a notification through the Investor Portal that new documents are in my queue. At which point, I immediately look at it and then do some mental math and go over the distributions. That's another benefit of the dashboard: I can filter by product or by investment, and I know, I'm making nine to 10%, based on the distributions.

Have you ever invested with other general partners that don't provide technology or an Investor Portal?

So if they don't have a portal, I won't invest with them. I find that, if their tech stack isn't very mature, I'm going to be struggling to get updates. I'm wondering what technology they use to communicate to investors. Because nobody wants to put $100,000 or $50k into a deal and be wondering like, "Am I losing money?" So I would say, I generally don't work with people that don't use something like AppFolio. But if they do, sometimes the portal isn't as mature, not as simple to use. So, streamlining my customer experiences is important.

Why do you think it's important for other investors to have an Investor Portal or a tech stack requirement for working with a syndication or general partner?

Peace of mind, transparency. You know, it's all about accountability. It's about reporting, I think one of the primary reasons that we have platforms like this is to use them as a central source of truth— for that thing, that you need information around. When I log into a platform like this, it's important to me that I have all the data right in front of me. So I think it's critical because as a customer, I need that information.