The Company

Northwest Real Estate Capital Corp. (Northwest) is an Idaho non-profit specializing in the property management and rehabilitation of HUD/Section 8, Rural Development and Tax Credit Housing. Based in Boise, Northwest operates more than 5,300 affordable housing units in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming.

The Challenge

Fixing Disconnected Software

Like many affordable housing providers, Northwest is challenged with rising costs, limited staff resources and growing compliance oversight from funding sources. Northwest seeks opportunities to leverage features and benefits of affordable housing technology to streamline workflows while ensuring its team members have proper training and access to software that can help them succeed.

The Solution

Yardi Affordable Housing Suite

The Yardi Affordable Housing Suite offers expertly crafted solutions for operations, finance, maintenance management and subsidy compliance. The foundation of the suite is Yardi Voyager which centralizes property management, accounting and compliance. Northwest uses other components of the Yardi Affordable Housing Suite for property marketing, paperless applications, payment processing, invoice processing, resident screening, training and more.

The Story

Achieving a Fully Integrated Solution

Noel Gill, President of Northwest Real Estate Capital, Corp., loves the affordable housing industry and its core mission of serving vulnerable families. His team is dedicated to meeting the housing and personal development needs of the households they serve.

The affordable housing industry, however, is not without its challenges. Rising operational costs such as insurance and a competitive real estate market puts pressure on affordable housing providers to continue to acquire and/or develop affordable housing.

Northwest has been using Yardi technology to help mitigate those challenges for more than 20 years. Throughout its business relationship with Yardi, Northwest has found ways to gain efficiency by building on opportunities to leverage connected technologies.

“An integrated solution helps with processes that streamline what we do and plays a key role in where we’re going in the future,” says Noel.

Integrated technology enables Northwest to collaborate across teams and office locations. Northwest previously relied on an intranet system and the postal service to send paper files between properties and headquarters. They replaced those processes and outdated technology with the Yardi Affordable Housing Suite. “The tools we used in the past were inefficient. We simplified our operations with web-based efficiency and a single database,” says Noel Gill.

Centralizing operations on the Yardi Voyager platform is the basis for Northwest’s integrated technology strategy. “We are always looking to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to technology. Yardi is advancing its products at lightning speed, and it became very clear that we had to fully embrace the latest Voyager platform,” said Gill.

Northwest considers steady, predictable resident turnover rates to be an indicator of how well its properties and support services are performing. Affordable housing units under Northwest management are designed to be steppingstones for households as they transition to permanent, market rate units. “We design our services to help residents move on to a sustainable lifestyle, and when they do, there is the added benefit of freeing a unit for a new household to begin the journey toward sustainability,” says Gill.

Training is also an integrated component of Northwest’s single-vendor software environment. Aspire, Yardi’s learning management
solution, includes learning plans for various roles in property management, including those found in affordable housing. As Northwest sees relatively high rates of employee turnover at the site staff level, Yardi Aspire makes it possible for new hires to onboard quickly into their new roles.