Multifamily · Yardi · Power BI
Their Board Questions Became Follow-Up Emails. Not Anymore.
A 2,068-unit NYC multifamily operator spent a full day rebuilding Excel reports before every review. Now they run a live Yardi Power BI dashboard, and leadership gets answers in the room, not the next day.
A multifamily owner-operator in New York City · 2,068 units across 51 properties
- The Problem
- Getting basic operational and financial metrics out of Yardi required too much manual work: pulling income statements property by property and merging them in Excel.
- Previous Approach
- The team spent roughly a full day pulling and combining data in Excel before each board meeting or review. The C-suite relied on emailed Excel files and had to request custom views when they needed a different cut of the data.
- The Solution
- RentViewer connected to Yardi and provided a clean, continuously refreshed data foundation. The operator's own team built two Power BI dashboards on top of it (a residential operations dashboard and a financial dashboard, each with six tabs) with RentViewer providing support on measures, data validation, and troubleshooting.
- The Result
- Monthly reviews now take half the time. Board deck prep dropped from a full day to 2–3 hours. The C-suite can filter and explore data themselves without going back to the team for a custom report.
The Data Was in Yardi. Getting Answers Was the Problem.
This operator manages 2,068 units across 51 properties in New York City, a mix of fair market and rent-stabilized units spanning multiple neighborhoods. Yardi held all the data. The problem was what happened every time someone needed to use it.
Before each board meeting or monthly review, someone pulled income statements property by property, merged them in Excel, reformatted everything, and built the deck manually. A full board prep cycle took roughly a full day. Every time.
In meetings, questions came up that no one could answer on the spot. What's the renewal rate at this property? How do rents compare year over year? How does that neighborhood track against budget? The answer wasn't in the room. It went on the follow-up list, which meant the decision waited too.
The Real Cost Was Decision-Making Speed
The C-suite had stopped looking at Yardi entirely. They relied on Excel files sent by their team, and when they needed a different cut of the data, they sent an email and waited. Reporting became a bottleneck, and the portfolio kept growing.
Clean Data In. Trusted Reporting Out.
RentViewer connected to their Yardi system and built a clean, validated data foundation, extracting, structuring, and refreshing the data on a regular schedule so the team always had something reliable to build on.
That foundation is what made everything else possible. The operator's own team built two Power BI dashboards on top of it: a residential operations dashboard and a financial dashboard, each with six tabs. When they hit roadblocks (writing DAX measures, validating figures, troubleshooting logic), RentViewer worked through them together. The dashboards are owned and operated by the team. RentViewer keeps the data underneath them clean and current.
Occupancy, Renewals, P&L: All in One Place
The residential dashboard tracks occupancy, vacancy by unit type, renewal rates, and rent trends year over year, broken down by unit type, rent stabilization status, and neighborhood. The financial dashboard surfaces monthly P&L, valuations, and yield across the full portfolio. Both update automatically. No exports. No reformatting.
Questions Get Answered in the Room Now
Power BI is now open on the shared screen in most large group meetings. When a question comes up (what's happening at this property, how do rents compare to last year), someone pulls the answer up in the room. The follow-up list got shorter. Decisions happen faster.
Leadership Stopped Waiting for Reports
Executives who never looked at Yardi now navigate the dashboards themselves. They filter by property, by neighborhood, by unit type, without sending a request and waiting for a reply. Board deck prep, which used to consume a full day, now takes 2–3 hours. Mostly copy-paste from Power BI into the presentation.
The Team Spends Less Time Building Spreadsheets
The team still does meaningful reporting work. But less of it is spent pulling and formatting data that a connected foundation now handles automatically. Monthly reviews take roughly half the time they did before.
“I was literally with our CEO preparing the deck for the board meeting, just taking screenshots out of Power BI. Like literally just copy-paste into the presentation.”
Multifamily Operations · Large NYC Owner-OperatorQuestions We Hear from Yardi Operators
Our team exports Yardi data into Excel every month. Can RentViewer eliminate that?+
Yes. RentViewer builds a direct connection to your Yardi system and refreshes the data on a regular schedule, so your dashboards always reflect current numbers. No more manual exports, no more reformatting. If your team wants to build their own Power BI dashboards on top of that foundation, RentViewer can support the build, helping with measures, data validation, and any technical issues along the way.
What can we actually see in a Yardi Power BI dashboard?+
Most operators want visibility into both operations and financials. On the operations side: occupancy, vacancy by unit type, renewal rates, and rent trends year over year. On the financial side: monthly P&L, property valuations, and yield. For NYC operators specifically, dashboards can be structured around rent-stabilized versus fair market units and broken down by neighborhood, whatever matches how you actually run the portfolio.
How long before we're actually looking at our own data in Power BI?+
Most customers are in a working dashboard within a few weeks of kickoff. RentViewer handles the Yardi connection and data foundation, and your team doesn't need a technical background to get started or to use the finished product.
We don't have a data team. Is that a problem?+
No. RentViewer handles the technical setup: the Yardi connection, data structuring, and refresh schedule. From there, your team can engage at whatever level works: RentViewer builds the dashboards for you, your team builds them with RentViewer's support, or anything in between. You don't need existing analytics infrastructure to get started.
Can our whole team use the same dashboards, or do we need separate versions for leadership vs. operations?+
The same dashboards can serve both. In this case study, the leasing team, asset managers, and C-suite all use the same two dashboards, and each person explores the data at the level of detail relevant to their role. Power BI's filtering means an executive can drill into one property without needing a custom report pulled for them. RentViewer structures the dashboards to work across user types from day one.
Still rebuilding the same Excel reports every month?
If your team is spending a full day rebuilding Excel reports before every review, and executives are still waiting for answers after the meeting ends, RentViewer builds the clean Yardi data foundation that makes reliable, self-serve portfolio reporting possible.
Most clients are in a working dashboard within a few weeks. No data team required.
30 minutes. No commitment. We'll show you exactly what's possible with your Yardi data.