Sherry worked her way up in property management from managing the books for a friend’s business to starting and running her own property management company. What drew Sherry to the industry was the opportunity to make a difference and help others.
“I realized early on that you either love property management or you hate property management. There is no gray area, but I love it. It's allowed me to do what comes naturally to me, which is paying it forward and helping people. It's taken me about 10 years to get to where I am today, but it's been that slow chug that has allowed me to learn a lot so that I could just keep thriving and make my owners and residents happy.”

In the past, Shaw Real Estate struggled with software solutions that were hard to use and didn’t have the capabilities its team needed to efficiently carry out their accounting workflows, which led to hours of wasted time, inaccuracies, and frustration.
“Before AppFolio, we had Yardi Breeze. From filing 1099s to reconciling accounts to handling basic, daily tasks, it made my life difficult. And it wasn't saving me time; it was costing me time. So I started looking around and noticed a lot of our competitors were using AppFolio Property Manager.”

When it comes to working with AppFolio, Sherry feels like she has a true partnership and has been supported at every turn since day one.
“AppFolio is a necessity to me. I can’t run my business without it. The partnership I have is incredible. We were up and running, not missing a beat, in a matter of weeks.”
Additionally, training new team members used to be a time-consuming, frustrating process for Shaw Real Estate. Thanks to the guided workflows and intuitive design of AppFolio, the team can get new hires ramped up faster and more efficiently with less stress. Sherry explains:
“With AppFolio, my new hires never get lost. It saves me time on training employees, and they’re not frustrated because they don’t understand the software. I can hire a new employee, and they can understand how it works in a matter of hours versus a matter of weeks.”

As more people have moved out of big cities and into smaller towns like Wilmington in the past few years, Shaw Real Estate has been able to attract more renters and surpass their expectations with the modern self-service features within AppFolio.
“The Online Portal within AppFolio has been huge for us. People don’t want to talk on the phone anymore — everything has to be convenient and quick. With AppFolio, renters can do 90% of the things with a click of a button that we used to have to talk to them 14 times on the phone about. It’s the kind of experience they want and have come to expect.”
Along with providing a better resident experience, AppFolio also helps the team at Shaw Real Estate exceed the needs of their owners.
“AppFolio makes life easier for my owners. It doesn't matter where they are or what they’re doing. They can go to the portal, and it's all right there for them — all of their statements, 1099s, and invoices. It’s priceless, and they love it.”