(May 12, 2005)—RealPage, Inc., a leading provider of products and services to the multifamily industry, today announced that it has acquired substantially all of the assets of The Pleco Group, a provider of utility management and billing solutions to the multifamily industry.
The Pleco Group offers utility meter installation, reading and maintenance services for water, gas and electric utility meters. The company also offers a powerful billing system that captures submetered or RUBS charges and generates monthly bills to residents, as well as vacant unit energy cost recovery services.
RealPage intends to combine the services offered by The Pleco Group with its new on-demand convergent billing system that merges water, energy, rent, late fees and other small balances into a single resident invoice and market the product under the trade name “Velocity™.”
According to Steve Winn, president and CEO of RealPage, “Reading, billing and collections companies (RBCs) offer a valuable service to help owners recover energy and water utility charges. RealPage will continue to support interfaces to the utility billing systems offered by the major RBCs. However, we also want to offer our own convergent billing product that merges all charges owed by the resident into a single bill and deliver this service for substantially less cost than currently charged by the RBC industry.”
Winn also announced the new executive team for Velocity. Ashley Chaffin, former vice president of Form Genus LLC and senior manager with McKinsey & Co., will lead the new division as president. “This is an exciting time for our company and for our customers,” said Chaffin. “This acquisition will only serve to strengthen our ability to grow and improve the outstanding service that customers have come to expect. We will continue to support multiple property management and submetering systems and remain committed to service excellence in all aspects of our business.”
The team also includes three former members of The Pleco Group. Michael Polly will manage the meter installation, reading, and maintenance business. “Pleco has provided submeter installation services to the industry for five years, installing and reading tens of thousands of water and energy meters at companies such as AMLI, Gables, Trammel Crow and many others,” said Polly. “We are delighted to become affiliated with RealPage because it gives us a platform from which we can dramatically expand this portion of our business.”
Bryan Vincent will oversee billing product management. Vincent, who began his multifamily career at Gables, has built several generations of utility billing and vacant unit cost recovery systems. “The convergent billing capabilities that are made possible through the integration of the billing systems offered by Pleco and the OneSite property management system will take the industry to a new level of sophistication. Our convergent billing capabilities will enable sites to automatically generate resident invoices for rent, water, electricity (if not billed by the electric provider), gas, late fees and small balances,” said Vincent. “Collection percentages for these types of fees are typically not optimal because residents don’t get the bills in a timely manner and don’t consider payment of these non-rent related bills as a potential event of default under their leases. Our Velocity convergent bills change this, allowing us to deliver the finished product for less cost to our clients.”
Jason Russell will head up sales, assembling a team to work with existing RealPage staff to promote Velocity products and services. “RealPage gives us the financial wherewithal and infrastructure needed to grow our business at an accelerated rate,” said Russell. “We are very excited about our partnership with RealPage and intend to continue servicing our existing clients with more resources at our disposal.”
Velocity is an on-demand cash management system for the multifamily industry that features an on-demand convergent billing system for rent, utility charges, late fees and small balances as well as an on-demand payments system for credit card, ACH and lock box payments.
OneSite is an integrated, web-based suite that automates the entire process of leasing, renting and managing apartments, including fast and easy resident screening, comprehensive facilities maintenance, simplified purchasing and expense controls, professional property management accounting, and convenient online rent payment.