Customer Benefits
Cut to the chase
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“The biggest thing for us is getting decisions earlier. The data room tracks everyone’s commitment, and it’s all in one spot. Now, it’s easier for us to see which investors are going to commit to a specific deal. There’s a lot less back and forth with investors as we assess their interest.”
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Simms commented, “Now we have time to do the things that really count. Our managers have the time to get out on the property. We have the time to go out and underwrite deals.”
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Targeted annual dividends
8-10%
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Targeted overall returns
15-25%
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Assets under management
$300M
Customer Overview
GMC Properties is a full-service professional real estate management company that was founded in 1984 by Jeff Simms with the purchase of a single-family rental property in Allegany, New York. Passed down to his sons Greg and Chris, who took over the business in 1997, GMC Property Management has expanded to own and operate apartments in Florida, the mid-Atlantic, Texas, and Utah.
GMC’s expansion has included all aspects of the multifamily business, including acquisition, disposition, asset management, value-add rehabilitation, ground up development, and 3rd party management. Their purchasing and management strategy has produced consistent annual cash dividends between 8-10% and overall returns of 15-25%.
The Challenge
GMC Properties initially did all of their investment and management tracking on Excel spreadsheets, and wanted something more streamlined and efficient. After implementing a low-cost provider that offered investment tracking as an extension of their property management software, it wasn’t long before they stopped using it.
“The software was almost like an enhanced Excel spreadsheet,” said Greg Simms, Managing Partner at GMC. “We were one of the first apartment groups to use it, and we helped them build a lot of their reports. Then they came out with an investment tracking software that went with it. It tracked distributions, but it wasn’t much better than what we did ourselves. There was no portal, no data room. We never really used it. It just didn’t have a lot of capabilities.”
Subscriptions were also frustrating. Simms commented, “When we’re doing a deal—especially with some of our smaller investors—not being able to do subscriptions online can be a real headache. It’s a nightmare getting dozens of people to sign and trying to determine, did we get all of the paperwork from each of them?”
GMC needed a robust software solution that could handle deals and distributions in a streamlined, professional, user-friendly way—one they could use on a daily basis.
The Process
When Simms read about Juniper Square in a trade magazine, he set up a meeting. He was immediately impressed. He said, “The best part about the software was the data room for deals. It looked a lot more professional. It was easier to get information.”
On the investor side, said Simms, “The portal was much nicer. It was a lot easier to tag which investors to target for each offering.”
Being able to integrate with other software was also important. “With the previous solution,” he said, “there was supposed to be a seamless integration between the property management software and the investment management software. We were supposed to be able to enter the investment size and it would automatically move it over to our accounting. It never worked. We still had to manually enter data, and manage distributions across multiple systems.”
GMC Properties decided to make the switch to Juniper Square. Simms remarked, “The old provider’s property management software is good, but they don’t integrate with anything. That’s ultimately why we moved.”
I flew F-16s for 10 years. All the technology in the jet was to make it easier to fly the jet, not make it more complicated. With Juniper Square, we don't have to do a lot of the things manually anymore because the software does it for us. The jet was the same way. It took care of things that you would have to do manually and did it automatically for you, so you’d have time to do other things that are more important.
Greg Simms
Managing Partner
The Results
Now, with Juniper Square’s data rooms and the investor portal experience, it’ll be easier for investors to access information and for GMC to handle distributions. “When we want to send them an update on how the property’s doing and what’s going on in the market,” said Simms, “we’ll be able to add all of this to the portal. It’ll be easier to get the information out to them, rather than individually emailing everyone.”
“They’ll be able to see all the information that we see. Before that was tough to do, because of the amount of information we have.”
In Juniper Square, GMC has found a trusted technology “autopilot.”
Simms shared, “I flew F-16s for 10 years. All the technology in the jet was to make it easier to fly the jet, not make it more complicated. With Juniper Square, we don’t have to do a lot of the things manually anymore because the software does it for us. The jet was the same way. It took care of things that you would have to do manually and did it automatically for you, so you’d have time to do other things that are more important.”
Metrics as of 5/1/2022
