Most of the work was engineering, not design.
Pages on the site
The Constraint: AppFolio Owns the Listings
AppFolio is where property managers keep the real data. It holds the units, the rents, the move-in dates, the amenities and the photos. Leasing teams live in it all day. Nobody wants a website that makes them keep a second copy of that data by hand.
The trade-off
AppFolio hands you its listings in a fixed format. You get a listing block that works. You don't get much say over how it looks, where the buttons go, or how it fits the rest of your site.
Why five pages
AppFolio's website product is limited. That's why Pacific Crest had five pages. They held the company details, then handed off to AppFolio for anything a renter wanted to see.
The Approach: A Page Per Managed Property
The key choice was to give every managed property its own page on the Pacific Crest site. The other option was one list for the whole portfolio that links out.
Live, not static
Each property page carries that property's live availability listing, with its amenities, features and photos. So the page isn't a fixed write-up of a building, written once and left alone. It shows what's really open.
5 pages to 250+
That's what took the site there, and it changes what the site is for. A five-page site can only rank for the company name and a couple of broad property management terms. A site with a page per property can answer a search for a specific building, neighborhood or unit type.
CTAs and lead capture rebuilt
The buttons and forms that ask a renter to get in touch were rebuilt across the site. A renter who lands on a property page from search can contact the leasing team right there. They don't have to go back to a general contact form.
Most of the work was engineering, not design.
Custom Build One: The AppFolio Listings Pro Plugin
Kihan Marketing built the AppFolio Listings Pro plugin. It reads AppFolio's public listings on the server and shows them as the site's own markup.
What changes
The listing block stops being a fixed part and becomes something you can style. Buttons, styles and CSS can all be changed. The listing data still comes from AppFolio.
What doesn't
It doesn't replace AppFolio. WordPress keeps only a short-lived cached copy of the listings, and AppFolio stays the source. The plugin controls the layer between AppFolio's output and what a visitor sees. So live availability sits inside the Pacific Crest design instead of breaking it up.
Custom Build Two: A Chat Leasing Tool on the AppFolio API
The second build solves another problem: a renter who doesn't know which building they want.
The visitor a page per property misses
A page per property is great for someone searching for a named building. It helps less for someone who wants a one bedroom in a certain neighborhood at a certain price. That person doesn't care what the building is called.
What the tool does
It pulls neighborhoods, pricing, cities and areas. Then it shows real, active listings with full detail, direct from AppFolio. The important word is real. It's not a scripted bot that takes a name and email and promises a callback. It checks live listing data and sends back units that are really open, with their detail. A renter who asks about a neighborhood and a price range gets units that exist and are free at the moment they ask.
A different discipline
Building it meant working with the AppFolio API, not the AppFolio front end. That turned out to be a whole other kind of job from the plugin. The plugin problem was about how things look. This one was about reaching the data and asking it the right questions.
The important word is real.
The Community Sites
Pacific Crest properties also run their own community websites. Kihan Marketing helped on several of them.
- Zephyr Seattle zephyrseattle.com
- Stream Dexios streamdexios.com
- Stream 403 stream403.com
- Rejuvenate Apartments rejuvenateapartments.com
- Calabria Townhomes calabriatownhomes.com
These sit next to the main property management website, not inside it. A community site serves the people who live, or want to live, in one building. That's a narrower job than the main site does.
Pacific Crest's investment sales team has a site of its own too, at pacificcrestinvestmentsales.com. Kihan Marketing designed and built it for owners and investors buying or selling apartment buildings.
Why This Matters When You Are Choosing an Agency
If you manage properties and you're weighing a rebuild, take two things from this project.
Page count is set by what renters search for
Not by a sitemap template. Pacific Crest needed 250+ pages because it manages that many properties, and each one is a separate search.
Integration depth is a real variable
"Works with AppFolio" can mean two things. It can mean an embedded block that looks like someone else's software. Or it can mean a plugin and an API tool built so the listing data acts like part of your own site. The two are far apart in work and in cost. Ask which one you're being quoted for.
Property Management and Multifamily Is Kihan Marketing's Deepest Vertical
Apartment communities are the deepest part of Kihan Marketing's work, with real estate brands the next largest group. The AppFolio work here isn't a one-off. Kihan Marketing also tunes AppFolio listing marketing, and advises on using AppFolio's v1 API and its reporting.
To discuss a property management website, an AppFolio integration, or an apartment community build, call (425) 954-3452 or email info@kihanmarketing.com.
