Tenant Turner cofounders James Barrett, Brandon Anderson and Chris Stewart experienced firsthand the pain of finding qualified tenants for their own rental properties.
Spotting an opportunity in the software market, they started the Richmond-based company in 2014 to improve the process.
Tenant Turner is a SaaS company that focuses on serving real estate owners and property managers in the residential rental markets.
They work with real estate professionals who want help marketing their properties and finding tenants. Traditionally, an owner or manager has to manually list each property on various rental sites, often using personal cell numbers or missing calls during business hours, Barrett said.
"The big thing for our current customer base is being able to efficiently grow their portfolio by leveraging automation to help with leasing," he said. "With Tenant Turner, we've made sure none of the leads were falling through the cracks."
Barrett said the company has been able to automate most of this process. Prospective tenants can access self-service help through the platform 24/7, which helps them with tasks like providing necessary property information, qualifying them based on parameters set by property managers, and scheduling self-showing appointments by using lock boxes.
"What customers come to us for is to ... take that tenant lead from the point of interest all the way in the door," he said.
Thanks to their backgrounds in IT, Barrett, Anderson and Stewart have successfully adapted the product as needed. Barrett said the real estate market has continued evolving since the housing collapse of 2007, but software products have somewhat lagged behind. This opened up a space for Tenant Turner to focus on a rental software product.
"For the longest time, particularly in real estate tech, every new product was more associated with mortgages or buying and selling of homes, and so rental tech has kind of been a laggard," Barrett said. "That's obviously where we saw an opportunity."
Tenant Turner operates in all 50 states and Canada. In fast-growing markets, such as Nashville, Atlanta, Orlando and Richmond, Barrett said that they have focused on working with residential rental customers as a demand for rentals has increased.
"The reality of it is there has been a shift toward renting," Barrett said. "There are more people renting than there have been ever in the existence of that data."
The company offers many add on features to its basic services, such as partnering with a call center for live call support. What Barrett believes really sets Tenant Turner apart is company culture and sense of community. Each year they pay one month's rent for a tenant who's fallen on hard times, he said.
"We've put a little southern hospitality into our software, and that goes a long way when many people are dealing with soulless, faceless software services,” he said. "It's allowed us to create a product that is customer driven and people really get enjoyment out of using."