How Open is Your PMS?

Five years ago, relatively few multifamily owners prioritized "openness" when selecting a property management system. While proptech CEOs building point solutions would often grumble about poorly-documented APIs and stiff platform fees, the people who mattered—COOs and CTOs of owner-operators—didn't particularly care.

AI has changed the landscape dramatically. Yardi, once criticized as a walled garden, made waves last Fall by releasing a model context protocol (MCP) connector for Claude, paving the way for third-party AI innovation. In a different approach, Appfolio has continued developing their Stack Marketplace, which we wrote about in Thesis Driven last year.

This month, we're doing a deeper dive into how various property management systems are perceived, and we need your help.

We're conducting a very brief survey of anyone with experience working directly with PMS platforms—real estate owner-operators, technology vendors, and consultants, among others—about the PMS ecosystem.

Click here to take the survey.

Through this, we'll understand how “open” today’s property management systems really are: how easily customers can access and export their own data, how straightforward it is to connect third-party tools, and how deep those integrations actually go in practice.

Your responses will help create a clearer picture of where platforms are enabling interoperability and where friction, fees, or technical barriers still limit flexibility. The survey takes just a few minutes, and all responses will be reported in aggregate in a Thesis Driven letter that will be published in late March.

–Brad Hargreaves