Optimizing Operations for Real Estate Investors - Interview with Startups of the Year Nominee, Azibo

Hey Hackers,

Azibo has been nominated in HackerNoon's annual Startup of the Year awards in Los Angeles, California.

Please vote for us here: https://hackernoon.com/startups/north-america/north-america-los-angeles-ca-usa.

Read more about us below to understand why we deserve your vote.

Meet Azibo

Azibo is a unified financial and property management platform used by thousands of independent real estate investors and landlords. The platform helps property owners manage tens of thousands of rental units across the U.S., including hundreds of millions of dollars in rental transactions annually. Prior to Azibo, institutional property management software built specifically for real estate investors managing under 50 units did not exist. It’s an area that has been massively underserved and needs digital transformation.

My Role

I’m Vikas Gupta, CEO of Azibo. Prior to Azibo, I held a variety of roles at different pre-seed to Series B startups, including as a founder, product leader, and marketing leader. Over my 15+ years in the tech industry, I’ve helped companies grow from pre-revenue to 8+ figures in revenue.

How We're Disrupting/Improving the Real Estate Industry

We envision a world where anyone can achieve financial flexibility through rental property ownership. We use technology to simplify and enhance our users’ experience of managing and growing their real estate investments.

Unlike other property management software available today, Azibo is the only platform that integrates both financial services and accounting solutions specifically designed for real estate investors with property management capabilities as well. While most landlords and real estate investors use fragmented tools to run their business —  including QuickBooks or Excel spreadsheets for accounting and taxes; separate solutions for accepting rental applications and screening tenants; and then collecting rent via cash, Venmo, or direct deposits with their preferred bank — Azibo real estate investors are doing all of that in one place. Azibo also offers its core solutions for free, helping real estate investors save money and improve their profit margins.

To date, we’ve seen:

• +20K rental units managed on Azibo
• +10K positive reports made to credit bureaus to help renters build credit
• +37M raised from notable investors including Khosla, Canaan, QED, Camber Creek, RET, and Liberty Mutual
• +250M financial transactions successfully processed on the Azibo platform

Standing Out from The Crowd

Azibo acts as a one-stop-shop for:

• Rental applications: Easily find the right tenant based on the criteria that is most important to a landlord.
• Tenant screening: Verify quality tenants with access to full candidate screenings, including a credit check, criminal background check, and eviction reports.
• Custom lease agreements: Azibo’s state-specific rental lease agreements allow landlords to stay compliant and invite tenants to sign online versus hiring an attorney or using an additional third-party platform.
• Simplified rent collection: Track real-time payment status and help tenants pay rent on time with flexible payment options including ACH bank transfer, debit card, credit card, or paper check.
• Rental property accounting: Streamline bookkeeping, expense management, and financial reporting with the only accounting and tax prep tools purpose-built for real estate investors. Azibo Accounting was built in partnership with real estate accounting firm Hall CPA PLLC.
• Affordable property insurance: Offers transparency and speed in the rental property insurance process, helping landlords get the right coverage at the right price. Azibo customers have seen up to 25% savings on their portfolio.

Additionally, Azibo has partnered with top investors across PropTech and FinTech to fundamentally improve the financial services experience for rental property owners, renters, property managers, and vendors.

This year, Azibo partnered with Brandon Hall, Founder & Managing Partner of Hall CPA, a boutique accounting and consulting firm with a sole focus on serving the needs of real estate investors and real estate business owners. Together, they brought to life Azibo Accounting — a better way to organize bookkeeping to maximize profitability. Azibo Accounting provides a real-time, single source of truth to help you manage your cash, accounting, and bookkeeping with confidence. They built this rental property accounting software solution from the ground up to help landlords ensure compliance, save money and time, and eliminate common tax errors. This is the kind of product that most companies outsource, but Azibo is one of the first to offer it within their already existing platform, providing landlords with a single comprehensive resource for all their needs.

Our Predictions/Thoughts on the Real Estate Industry in 2023

2023 is the year of operational optimization for independent real estate investors. Many investors who focused on growth over the past decade or more of near 0% interest rates are now switching their focus away from appreciation/refi-led growth towards ensuring that their current portfolio is performing (cash flowing) as well as it can be.

On the expense side, investors are taking a hard look at all the expenses they incur and seeing if there are ways to trim back. If they are paying for utilities, can they pass that cost on to tenants to incentivize energy conservation? Are they getting enough value from their landscapers and other service providers, or is there an opportunity there to renegotiate or find a new vendor? In certain markets where real estate prices have started to trend downwards, is there an opportunity to challenge your tax assessment and save on property taxes?

On the revenue side, investors are also making sure they are charging market-rate rents, and if not, bringing rents to market where they can. This can always be tricky with tenants in place — often having a good, reliable tenant is worth more than another $50 per month in rent — so investors should tread carefully here. Just because you can raise rent doesn’t mean you should. But where it makes sense, and where possible (e.g., unit turnover), investors today are focusing on rent optimization.

We will continue to see the ongoing trend in deploying technology in the independent real estate investor market. Software like Azibo, which helps independent real estate investors stay organized and on top of their finances, is critical to the type of operational optimization discussed above. Beyond that, as digital natives continue to become a bigger part of the renter market (sidebar: Note that the first generation of adults born after the iPhone will soon hit the rental market), tenants will increasingly gravitate towards properties that provide digital payment options and associated value-added benefits. 80% of tenants today want digital payments, and only 25% of properties offer them. Soon the 80% that “want” digital payments will start to “demand” digital payments, as increasingly these cohorts don’t even have physical checkbooks.  And, with a high-interest rate environment making debt incredibly expensive, tenants will want to leverage rent reporting tools to report their single biggest expense (rent) to credit bureaus and build their credit scores.

What word defines the state of Real Estate in 2023?

Transformational

Why we decided to participate in HackerNoon's Startup of the Year awards

HackerNoon is a one-stop shop for all things tech. Participating in Startup of the Year means connecting with a community that is eager to learn, innovate, and improve the world we live in. It means being a part of the conversations that are shaping the future. As entrepreneurs, we want to be surrounded by people and conversations that inspire us and encourage us to do better — and HackerNoon is single-handedly facilitating this.

Final Thoughts

Azibo is the only technology platform where a landlord can build a unified view across their rental property portfolio — whether they own long-term residential, short-term rentals, mid-term rentals, or room rentals — as well as across self-managed and property managed, even if their property managers use different systems. By bringing rental property operations into one place, Azibo empowers independent landlords with a simpler way to run their real estate business and manage finances. Through the use of innovative technology, Azibo is simplifying and enhancing property owners’ experience of managing and growing their real estate investments.