Owner and resident accounts
Personal sign-in with password reset and two-factor login, so each person sees only the properties and documents assigned to them.
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Customer Portal Website for Property Management Companies
A customer portal website for property management companies gives owners and residents one signed-in place for leases, statements and service requests. SIZ Group designs and builds that portal so your office stops answering the same document questions by phone and email.
01
Where owner and resident requests stall today
Most property management offices run on a chain of inboxes. A resident emails about a dishwasher that will not drain, an owner calls for last quarter's statement, and a vendor asks for proof of insurance. Each message lands with a different person, and nobody sees the full history of the unit or the owner account.
The breakdown usually happens at the handoff. A leasing coordinator forwards a signed renewal to an owner, the owner replies with a question about the rent increase, and the answer sits in a sent folder for three days. Staff spend their afternoons finding documents that already exist, and owners lose confidence that their requests are being tracked at all.
Your property management system already holds most of this information. What is missing is an owner portal for property management, a front door where owners and residents can see their own records and status without writing to the office first.
02
What the first release of a customer portal website should include
Start with sign-in that works. Each owner and resident gets a personal login with a password reset and a two-factor option, and each account sees only its own units, statements and files. Role-based access matters here, because a regional manager may oversee twenty buildings while an owner needs just one.
Document sharing comes next, and it works best as a property management document library. Leases, renewal notices, year-end owner statements and insurance certificates sit together with dates and version history, not as attachments buried in an email thread. A resident should find last year's lease without calling anyone.
Maintenance request tracking closes the loop. A resident submits a repair or move-out request, receives a reference number, and watches it move from received to scheduled to completed. The office sees the same status on the back end, so nobody has to chase a vendor for an update.
- Owner and resident sign-in with password reset and two-factor option
- Document library organized by property, unit and document type
- Request forms that issue a reference number and a visible status
- Email alert when a new document is posted or a request changes
03
Connecting the portal to the software you already run
A portal should read from and write to your system of record rather than replace it. Leases, ledgers and work orders stay where your accounting team expects them. Before any build starts, we would confirm which integrations your vendor supports, since API access and fees differ from one platform to another.
Many offices in this trade run AppFolio, Buildium, Yardi or Rent Manager for accounting and leasing, with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 for shared mailboxes. Where a platform offers no public API, we would use a scheduled export or a secure document feed and write that limit into the scope so nobody is surprised later.
Analytics belongs beside the portal rather than inside the sign-in pages. Google Analytics 4 can show which document pages owners open and which request forms get abandoned, and that tells your operations manager where the wording or the steps need work.
What you get
Key features
Secure document library
Leases, statements and notices are stored by property and unit with dates and version history, so the latest copy is always the one shown.
Maintenance and move-out requests
Each request gets a reference number and a visible status, from received through scheduled to completed, which cuts repeat calls to the office.
Notification emails
Owners and residents receive an alert when a document is posted or a request changes. The email names the file without including its contents.
Staff admin view
Office staff see every request and document for their assigned portfolio, with an audit trail that records who uploaded or changed each item.
04
Privacy, payment and fair housing rules for the portal
A resident portal holds leases, contact details and sometimes screening results. Rent payments should run through your ledger's own payment page or a processor such as Stripe, so card numbers never touch the website. Tenant screening reports fall under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, so the portal should show them only to people authorized to see them.
Fair housing rules follow the company into the portal. Notice text, request categories and document labels should never steer anyone by familial status, disability or another protected class. We would build to WCAG 2.2 AA as the working accessibility standard, so residents who use screen readers or keyboards can still sign in and submit a request.
Retention is a policy decision that the build has to support. Decide how long each document type stays visible, and what happens to an owner's account after a management agreement ends. Write that rule down before launch.
05
Information and access your team needs to provide
Before design starts, we need a list of every document type that owners and residents expect to see, with a named owner for each type. That list is usually shorter than staff expect, and it sets the folder structure for the whole site.
We also need the access rules in plain language. Send us a sample owner, a sample resident and a sample manager account, and the list of properties grouped under each owner, so we can map every login correctly before testing begins.
Technical access comes last. Provide an admin login for the property management platform or a set of scheduled exports, the sending domain for notification emails, and your approved brand assets.
- Document types, each with an owner, retention period and visibility
- Property and owner mapping for every login
- Admin access to the platform or sample export files
- Logo files, approved photos and the legal footer text for the site
06
Getting owners and residents to use the portal
A portal saves time only when people sign in. Launch with an invitation email to owners that explains what they can now see, then send residents a notice with step-by-step first login instructions and the office phone number for anyone who gets stuck.
Staff need the same attention. Give leasing and maintenance coordinators a short walkthrough of the request queue, and agree in writing who answers a request that arrives after hours. During the first month, watch which requests still come in by email and ask why each one did.
Post launch support is available, and we recommend a review at thirty days. We look at failed logins, document folders nobody opens and requests that never reached a new status, then adjust the wording or the flow.
Will the customer portal website replace our property management software?+
No. The portal connects to the system you already use, such as AppFolio, Buildium, Yardi or Rent Manager, so leases and ledgers stay in one place. If a vendor offers no public API, we use scheduled exports and state that limitation in the written scope before work begins.
How do you stop one owner from seeing another owner's documents?+
Each login is tied to a fixed list of properties and document categories. We test access with sample owner, resident and manager accounts before launch, and we repeat that check whenever a property changes owners or managers.
Can residents pay rent through the portal?+
Yes, but the payment should run through your ledger's own payment page or a processor such as Stripe. The portal can link to that page and show payment history, while card numbers stay off the website entirely.
What does a customer portal website cost?+
Websites range from $300 to $2,200, depending on scope. The final figure depends on how many logins, integrations and document types the portal needs, and it is confirmed in writing after the free scoping call.
How long will the build take?+
The schedule depends on the number of integrations and how quickly your team returns the document list and access details. The written scope sets the dates, and design waits for your sign-off.
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Plan your owner and resident portal
Book a free scoping call, and the scope and price come back to you in writing before any build begins.