Since 2001, Resite Online’s ResidentHub has led the way in online resident services for multifamily owners. ResidentHub pioneered the resident portal, helping apartment residents to pay rent online, submit maintenance requests and stay current on community events.

Today, we are excited to share that ResidentHub has been updated! The new ResidentHub features a new page layout and feature upgrades that meet today’s apartment resident ‘s needs for web-based customer service, including mobile compatibility.

What is New in the ResidentHub Update?

Heading into 2012, our multifamily customers have different needs. Renters are on the go more than ever and need more options for communication, online payments and area connections. Here are a few highlights:

Mobile Enabled: Residents can now pay on the go from any mobile platform. iPhone, Android and other smart phone users can now access their accounts and pay from any location. A ResidentHub login can be added to your mobile website page at no additional cost.

Improved Email Capability & Updated Online Newsletter:  Ability to email all residents for whom you have collected email addresses.  The newsletter postings are now more visible on the homepage and make it easier to communicate.

New Local Coupons Section: Highlight local deals and area partners to your residents online.

New User Interface for Residents & Reorganized Homepage: When residents login to your ResidentHub, the entire experience has been upgraded, including an updated menu and homepage layout.  The main page has changed to provide more visibility to many services and content.

Same Industry-Leading Rent Payments and Maintenance Requests: Still the best rent payment capabilities, including multiple processing partners and software integrations with RealPage, Yardi, AMSI, and MRI.

Additionally, we have a new Facebook App so residents are able to log in to ResidentHub directly from apartment community Facebook pages. These changes are available immediately, and the new platform will also lead to additional features in 2012.

When Will Customers see their ResidentHub Update?

For current customers, this is a free update.  We have begun updating customers this month, and most communities will be updated by the end of February. This does not require any new data or changes to the payment processing module. It is simply a change in the product architecture and is a new user interface for the residents. We will notify each client at least a week before they will be updated with details and the opportunity to address any questions.

New customers and new communities began rolling out this new ResidentHub this fall, and all new communities will continue to launch on the new platform.

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