PropTech Behemoth Grows in Manufactured Housing Industry, Experience

by Patrick Revere

From Left, Tanner Buuck and Andrew Jones from Yardi work with a customer during the 2021 Florida Manufactured Housing Association Annual Conference in Sarasota, Fla.

YYardi software is a solution for approximately 50% of multifamily and commercial properties in the country, and the company now has firm footing in manufactured housing. The billion dollar company with more than 7,000 employees has a dedicated team to service manufactured housing industry clients looking for property management and accounting systems.

“We have the resources you would anticipate from a global company, but we also provide a very focused manufactured housing team,” Yardi

Vice President Jeff Adler said. “It’s a good balance, we have a deep skillset to draw upon for our clients.”

Andrew Jones and Tanner Buuck manage Yardi’s manufactured housing and self storage division, working with the Yardi Breeze product that was redesigned for land-lease communities about three years ago.

Adler said Breeze can be used to manage a single community and all the way up to the largest operators, all based on a per-homesite basis.

Yardi has about 40 offices across the country, and has built a name in property management technologies, with accounting capabilities that require no other accounting software. With 4,000 clients today, Yardi tailors its features and schedules to the needs of manufactured home community operations today, particularly through the COVID-19 pandemic. The solutions provide corporate and property-level website communication and transaction offerings.

“You can do business on the platform, which is what is needed, particularly now. It’s been a critical strength but in the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic it’s proven all the more valuable,” Adler said.

“From tracking lot rents and collection to managing loan servicing and utility billing,” Adler said. “They’re built together, it’s all web-based and easy to use."

Simplifying back office work allows owners and managers to spend more time in front of residents, or prospects.

It’s property management and accounting with no need for Quickbooks. That’s the combination that I really think is attractive for property managers.

-Jeff Adler

“That’s where they should be,” Adler said. “The back office ideally should really take care of itself. And if you spend too much time thinking about your software, you have the wrong software.” MHV

by Sean Vichinsky

CCommunity operators find efficiencies in a variety of ways, becoming very strategic about portfolio or property transactions, and other large, capital intensive purchases.

But is there a strategy for when you need 15 homes set in Fort Wayne, a half dozen dryers for the family park in Houston, or 4 playgrounds for a couple communities in Alabama?

“Our ambition is to streamline & simplify the way MH portfolios purchase the goods and services they need to maintain and operate their communities. That starts with making the procurement aspect of a community manager’s job a little better and a little easier,” Dave Bowen, the CEO of Purchasing Platform said.

The land-lease portion of the manufactured housing industry continues to consolidate, and the institutional owners are looking for ways to standardize practices with comprehensive service providers and technology solutions that can expand offerings and reduce hard costs. As a result, streamlining vendor management and driving compliant procurement practices are increasingly prioritized.

Founded in 202 by Peter Hepner, the original aim of Purchasing Platform was to develop an easy to use marketplace, like Amazon for manufactured housing, and provide a true “one-stop-shop” for the products regularly purchased by community managers.

Building a “PropTech” startup is never easy, and in late 2016 the company required funding to scale operations. Bowen injected significant working capital in exchange for a controlling stake in the business. After leaving to work for another »

property investment & management firm, Hepner returned to Purchasing Platform in 2019.

“To say that Dave brought some new ideas to the business would be an understatement,” Hepner said. “His successful background in building procurement technology along with his strategic vision of how we can expand how we support Members has had a huge impact on our value proposition and our growth trajectory.”

And in raising capital.

The company brought in more $7.5 million in institutional capital in less than a year led by Method Capital, a major venture capital firm in Chicago.

While offering a MH industry-specific marketplace remains a key component of the solution today, the company’s value proposition has expanded significantly. The technology now offers several features that drive significant portfolio-wide efficiencies, control and transparency into what is being purchased every day.

Users of Purchasing Platform now benefit from an audit trail of all purchases, from every vendor, with multi-level workflows that allow community managers a moderate amount of spend before having expanded levels with added training, or for those at the director/executive levels. Office supplies, paint, commercial playgrounds, HVAC and skirting, golf carts… the list goes on.

“Let’s say you have someone new on the team and maybe they haven’t had all the training they need and they start buying stainless steel appliances... You can edit the order before it is processed in our system and also set up preferences to ward against that non-compliant buying behavior in the future,” Bowen said.

All the GL Code classification work is done automatically within the system before the funds are deployed as well, creating soft savings by removing the need for expense reports and similar documentation. In addition, the platform now allows for tax exempt purchasing in qualifying states and a lot/unit number drop down to allow Community Managers to assign specific expenses to specific homes.

Each client can also apply for a single credit check, rather than being vetted by multiple vendors, and will be provided concierge level treatment with preferred vendors of every variety, including every day names like The Home Depot, Lowe’s. Office Depot, Sherwin Williams, Style Crest, Blevins, Playcore and many more.

Another byproduct of the platform is the reduction in trips that Community Managers take to local stores. One large land-lease community owners said Purchasing Platform reduced the organization’s number of trips to big box stores, by more than 60% in six months.

Not surprisingly, much of Purchasing Platform’s technology roadmap has been driven by suggestions from the company’s 200-plus member portfolios.

“If our primary goal is to make the lives of Community and Regional Managers a little easier, we want to

make sure that the technology we’re building is going to deliver on that goal,” Senior VP of Members Operations & Product Management Arjun Dutt said. “One of the great things about our industry is that our users are not afraid to share feedback.”

The company has recently overhauled its search capabilities and will be rolling out an entirely new Member experience in late August.

While more than 30 of the Top 100 portfolio owners already use Purchasing Platform, the technology that the company is building is filled with features and functionality that any portfolio owner will need to save money and drive compliance.

Purchasing Platform considers its vendors customers, too, providing a stabilized marketplace, predictable pricing, and new business in an expanding industry. Interestingly enough, the offerings have gone beyond standard products that communities buy every day and expanded into Services and other management related expenditure.

“If you think about the operational spend that happens daily, monthly, or annually, you’re going to get maintenance supplies. What we were missing out on was the more strategic stuff, like an installed HVAC unit, or having new homes set, or getting a property paved, arranging for tree trimming or leak detection services… these are all very common needs,” Bowen said. “And thanks to the guidance and support from some of our members, we’ve started to support these more strategic purchases too.

In fact, if you can’t find the thing you’re looking for, Purchasing Platform’s in-house Project Management Team will find it for you.

Composed of former senior professionals from across the property management sector, this team acts as an extension of Purchasing Platform’s member organizations and can facilitate multiple bids from multiple vendors on everything from new home setting to paving to landscaping to site amenities to vehicles and more. MHV

Sean Vichinsky is an editor of MHInsider and a marketing copywriter for MHVillage.