The Sax Realty Group

The Sax Realty Group, an apartment and mobile home property management company based in Milford, Ohio, no longer has to write checks by hand or fax tenant information to one central location.

With Rent Manager^™, Sax property managers can enter their property and tenant information online from any location. Better yet, the company, which employs 34 people and has approximately 2,700 units under management, now laser prints their payroll and vendor checks in less than half the time it took to write them by hand. But life wasn’t always this easy.

Prior to 1999, Sax simply acquired existing properties, each of which used its own property management program or process. Then, in February 1999, Sax purchased a property that was using Rent Manager. About that same time, Sax decided to begin managing all of its properties, which now include more than 1,000 apartment units and over 1,700 mobile home pads in 17 different parks. Still, Sax hand wrote every check they paid to employees and vendors. As Sax continued to grow, so did its piles of paperwork. With no real centralized system, the company seemed to be stretching itself too far to complete its basic tasks. To solve this problem, Sax switched all of its properties to the Rent Manager program.

“The big factor in switching to Rent Manager for all of our properties was that it was just easier to use,” explains Sax President Andy Camden. “It was cleaner, faster and simpler than anything we had used previously. Then, they (Rent Manager) approached us with the online version.”

Sax’s first version of Rent Manager allowed the company to automate more of its daily tasks and centralize its data entry process. However, that still meant each property had to fax its information to Sax’s main office, where one person would input information from each property. But with Rent Manager’s online version, each property can now enter its information directly into the program via the Internet from any location at any time.

“That was the big selling point for us,” Andy says. “It allowed anyone to access it who needed to—from home, from the office, without going to one specific computer.”

Andy says Rent Manager’s ease of use made adopting the program even more appealing, given Sax’s growing staff of users. “Training is almost a no-brainer. If a person knows how to use any type of Windows operating system, it’s quick. Even those who have little computer experience can get the hang of the program within two 30-day rent cycles.”

Another issue solved by Rent Manager was tracking. With tenant numbers well into the thousands, keeping track of such issues as move-ins, vacancies, work orders, delinquent rents, and payables seemed an endless chore. Using Rent Manager centralized all of this information and increased the speed and efficiency of the process. 

“For example, just think of all the hand-written checks we had, the potential for errors, and how long that process took,” Andy says. “Now, we laser print all of our checks right off the system. It’s not only quicker, it’s more accurate.”

Overall, Sax is very satisfied with its decision to turn to Rent Manager.  It has helped them to build, maintain and expand. “It has been there to solve almost any problem we’ve had,” Andy remarked.  “And if the program itself can’t solve the problem, Rent Manager’s technical support is always available to help.”  Andy and his associates have encouraged others to use Rent Manager, and expect a prosperous future.