Curious how you implemented this to be more reliable? Headless browsers or official APIs?
Launch HN: Propify (YC W23) – Property Management System API Aggregator
11–20 of 58 posts
Re: Launch HN: Propify (YC W23) – Property Management System API Aggregator
#12Can you give some example use cases for this? For context I own some investment properties and have a property manager who manages them, so I have some familiarity with tools like Appfolio (but probably not as much as you'd expect your target customer to have). I'm just curious what this would be used for. Maybe user story style - as I would be able to .
Of course! Let me give this a shot with a couple examples in your suggested format... - As an engineer for a tenant background check company, I can use Propify to easily integrate with systems like Entrata, Buildium and Propertyware so that I only need to create a single integration instead of 3. - As a sales rep for a property maintenance company, I can confidently sell into new property managers who use systems tha…
Aaah, got it now - thank you!
Re: Launch HN: Propify (YC W23) – Property Management System API Aggregator
#13Curious how you implemented this to be more reliable? Headless browsers or official APIs?
Great point of clarity. We made a business decision to only leverage actual APIs from these companies. As a result, our customers are still required to have an official relationship with each PMS they want to integrate with. We have made it a point to not do anything that violates ToS for each of these systems.
While we do possess some insight into how to more easily navigate the business development process with each PMS (and we help our customers do so), we do not help or encourage anyone to circumvent the process altogether.
Without naming specifics, it seems you have identified perhaps one of the more closed systems.
Re: Launch HN: Propify (YC W23) – Property Management System API Aggregator
#14I wish this was a thing back in 2012 when I was the technical co-founder of Rentlytics! We built our own integrations and it was terrible working with these systems. The docs were non existent and APIs limited in their capabilities to further vendor lock in.
What systems do you support? I couldn't find a list anywhere.
Re: Launch HN: Propify (YC W23) – Property Management System API Aggregator
#15I wish this was a thing back in 2012 when I was the technical co-founder of Rentlytics! We built our own integrations and it was terrible working with these systems. The docs were non existent and APIs limited in their capabilities to further vendor lock in. What systems do you support? I couldn't find a list anywhere.
Thanks for your feedback! Unfortunately your story is a common one - not much has changed with these APIs since 2012... or since 1999 for that matter.
Our current integrations include Yardi, RealPage, Entrata, Propertyware, Buildium, Rent Manager and Rentvine. On the roadmap are Appfolio, MRI and ResMan.
Necessary disclaimer: we only support integrations for customers who have officially sanctioned relationships with each PMS. We do not do anything that violates ToS (e.g. scraping, chrome extensions, etc.).
Re: Launch HN: Propify (YC W23) – Property Management System API Aggregator
#16I wish this was a thing back in 2012 when I was the technical co-founder of Rentlytics! We built our own integrations and it was terrible working with these systems. The docs were non existent and APIs limited in their capabilities to further vendor lock in. What systems do you support? I couldn't find a list anywhere.
Thanks for your feedback! Unfortunately your story is a common one - not much has changed with these APIs since 2012... or since 1999 for that matter. Our current integrations include Yardi, RealPage, Entrata, Propertyware, Buildium, Rent Manager and Rentvine. On the roadmap are Appfolio, MRI and ResMan. Necessary disclaimer: we only support integrations for customers who have officially sanctioned relationships with…
From my memory some of the big players require api license fees in the thousands per api. It was my understanding that these are to be paid by every implementor using their docs. How are you guys getting API access to build? Is this not really as common anymore?
Re: Launch HN: Propify (YC W23) – Property Management System API Aggregator
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for your feedback! Unfortunately your story is a common one - not much has changed with these APIs since 2012... or since 1999 for that matter. Our current integrations include Yardi, RealPage, Entrata, Propertyware, Buildium, Rent Manager and Rentvine. On the roadmap are Appfolio, MRI and ResMan. Necessary disclaimer: we only support integrations for customers who have officially sanctioned relationships with…
From my memory some of the big players require api license fees in the thousands per api. It was my understanding that these are to be paid by every implementor using their docs. How are you guys getting API access to build? Is this not really as common anymore?
Some of the systems remain pay-to-play for sure. We have adopted the consultant model where we are implementing our solution on behalf of our customers. This is why we require our customers to have their own relationship with each PMS. Their credentials are used to access each API. I sent a connect request to you on LI - happy to chat in more detail!
Re: Launch HN: Propify (YC W23) – Property Management System API Aggregator
#18Should probably clarify in the title that this is for property management, not real estate. MLS data is notoriously impossible to get without huge contracts, which is what made want to check this out.
what's the deal with MLS data? That sounds pretty interesting, some kind of protective moat they have in place? What's the backstory there?
Re: Launch HN: Propify (YC W23) – Property Management System API Aggregator
#19I work with multiple PMS platforms and centralizing even a simple unit price table is hellish given different PMS have different paradigms for concepts such as unit pricing. For example, Yardi (depending on the version of course) has 3 different tables for Market Price of a unit flying around in the backend, each with a slightly different definition.
Another issue (for users not API creators) is the lack of universal KPI definition - there are at least 6 major ways of calculating occupancy, each one needing its own specific dataset (economic occupancy, physical occupancy, economic occupancy revenue generating units, physical occupancy revenue generating units, trending occupancy, trending occupancy revenue generating units)
Concepts such as renewal ratio and collection ratio are particularly difficult due to their time component. Most of the pain comes not from getting the data out of the PMS through an API but rather knowing WHAT data is needed and for what KPI.
Re: Launch HN: Propify (YC W23) – Property Management System API Aggregator
#20Awesome concept! Good luck!