Resite Online home office will be closing early in observance of Thanksgiving on Wednesday, November 23rd and will return to normal business hours Monday, November 28th.

However, we will be monitoring emails and phone calls and urgent matters will be responded to.

Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving!

Ten years old!  Ten years young!

In 2001 the original founders of Resite started with what was at the time a very novel idea: that residents would want to pay their rent online. So we built the industry’s first ResidentHub to allow residents to pay online, submit maintenance requests, and stay current on community events.  Through the years we have added email capability, resident communication, lead management, resident rewards, and more.  In total ResidentHubs have processed over $1.3 billion in rent payments from more than 860,000 residents saving multifamily operators bundles of money and time. It is the original resident portal.  It is the most fully-featured resident hub.  It is still the best ResidentHub.

Out of our original work on ResidentHubs came calls from our customers for more – “Help us with websites; help us with online leasing; we want to market ourselves better on the Internet.”  So we developed LeasingPath, the most flexible online leasing application in the industry today.  It conforms to your processes and your application and converts those electronic inquiries into leases.  And we built thousands of the hardest working and best looking corporate and property websites out there.  They highlight your strengths.  They draw search engine traffic to you.  They drive you leads. They get prospects to visit you in person.

Globally, to simplify working with your systems already in place, we further integrated with RealPage, Yardi, MRI, AMSI, payment processors, VaultWare, Blue Moon, utilities, and multiple credit screeners.  Perhaps most telling, we count some of the proudest names in the industry as customers: Barrett & Stokely, Flaherty and Collins, McCann, Michael Stevens, NTS, Preiss, Venterra, Zaremba, and many more.

Along the way we were acquired by the big company, merged with one of its offspring, swallowed by one of its divisions, and finally (thankfully) spit back out on our own.  So here we are back to our entrepreneurial selves.

What does that mean looking forward?  We have solid financial backing.  We are a team with over 100 years of combined multifamily and Internet applications experience.  Our servers are hosted in a world class facility on top equipment.  We have just completed a redesign and upgrade of ResidentHub enhancing its usability and fully adapting it for mobile, which we will roll out to current customers in the fourth quarter.  We are finishing up a new website tool that is faster, smarter, and more flexible – which means easier for you to use, more features, more leads, and more closed prospects.  And we have begun work on new web enhancement tools that will help you stand out more and lower your cost per lead.

Even more, we have reorganized and rededicated ourselves to providing the very best customer service anywhere.  We have revamped our internal processes, welcomed original founder Greg Starr back onto the team, sharpened our current integrations while beginning work on new ones, and dramatically expanded our training to help properties get more out of our tools.

Internet marketing and tools can be complicated.  We get that – and we understand that our role is to sort through it for you.  We are dedicated to being your Internet partner, helping you make the most of a growing marketing and communications channel.

The first ten years seem to have flown by.  We look forward to working together over the next ten.

Peter Ill
President and Owner

Facebook recently announced its geotagging feature called Facebook Places. The product was introduced yesterday in the United States and will gradually roll out in other countries. The company is collaborating with several location-based companies, including Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, Booyah, and Localeze. Like other location-based services, Places already have existing locations and users can add new locations. The feature is intended for mobile use and Facebook has already launched the iPhone app.

Facebook Places Features

Users can share the following features on Facebook:

1. Check-In
2. Tag Friends with You
3. What are you doing: It is similar to status update. It updates your profile with the activity and if you have tagged a friend.

Facebook Privacy Setting

By default check-ins are visible to “Friends Only” but users can customize their privacy setting. By checking in you are giving Facebook permission to post it on your wall and News Feed. Privacy for Facebook Places includes:

• Places I check in to
• Include me in “People Here Now” after I check in: By checking the enable option anyone can see who are currently checked in at a location
• Friends can check me in to Places: Enabling this option allows your friends to check in at a place with them

Add or Report a Place

As mentioned before you can add a place. Facebook allows users to Flag a place for:

• Incorrect information
• Abusive
• Permanently closed
• Duplicate

I personally think that the feature needs some improvement. Earlier I tried to check-in at Resite Online. As Facebook did not have the Place available, I added it. It created a new local business page for Resite. We already had a Facebook page so it will be confusing to the users as there are two pages for the same business.

For more information visit: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=1080

Here at the Dominion Enterprises headquarters, members of the Resite Online team are participating in the Home Office Team Walking Competition.  The team that walks the most steps between May 17th and June 18th will win a half day of vacation.  We divided into teams of 6 and were given free pedometers to keep track of each step we take.  All of our steps count.  Even our steps at home, on the weekends, and around the office.

The competition ends just in time to kick off the 2010 CHKD Run/Walk for the Kids on June 19th in downtown Norfolk.  All the proceeds from the RunWalk go to CHKD (Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters).  CHKD relies on support from the community to provide the best health care to our region’s children.  Whether a child needs hospitalization, ongoing care for a chronic illness, outpatient surgery or primary care, CHKD Health System provides the staff, facilities and technologies that address the unique demands of childhood.

Why Should We Walk?

Because it is healthy, fun and will get us in shape for the race and even for sum­mer!  If that’s not enough—did you know that adding only 30 minutes a day of light exercise in intermittent periods will boost weight loss and promote positive health changes?  Breaking up your 30 minutes throughout the day still provides the same positive effects as doing the 30 minutes all at once!  Also, exercising regularly helps boost brain power, wards off illnesses, melts away stress and anxiety, pumps your heart, allows you to eat more and makes your muscles more efficient!

According to Wikipedia, “A total of 10,000 steps per day, equivalent to 5 miles (8.0 km), is recommended by some to be the benchmark for an active lifestyle, although this point is debated among experts.”

Wish us luck as we walk our way to half a day and an active lifestyle!