Case Study 6: HomeNest Property Group - Scenario Paper

Work in Progress

This content is currently being reviewed for accuracy and will be updated soon.

Case Study Prompt

This page is the prompt side of a full-board practice package. Read it first, build your own architecture, and return to the worked assets only after your timed attempt.

Case Study Snapshot

Field	Detail
Start here	This scenario paper
Difficulty	Intermediate
Industry	Real Estate and PropTech
Primary pressure areas	Security, Field Service, Integration, and Multi-org Strategy
Recommended prep window	180 minutes preparation + 45 minutes presentation + 45 minutes Q&A
Coverage available	Case Study Overview, Worked Solution, Presentation Notes, Q&A Preparation
Study flow	Attempt this case study paper first, then review the worked solution, presentation notes, and Q&A preparation after your own attempt.

Recommended Approach

Print this case study. Read it twice using the Two-Pass Reading Method once for the narrative and once for implicit requirements. Then build all nine core artifacts inside the full prep window before you open the support pages.

Project Overview

HomeNest Property Group (HNPG) is a commercial and residential property management company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Founded in 2011, HNPG manages a growing portfolio of residential apartments, single-family rentals, retail centers, and office buildings across the southern and western United States.

Company profile:

Attribute	Detail
Industry	Real Estate / Property Management / PropTech
Employees	950 (corporate, leasing agents, property managers, regional directors)
Managed properties	12,000 (8,000 residential units, 4,000 commercial spaces)
Active tenants	45,000
Property owners/investors	300
Annual revenue	$280M (management fees, leasing commissions, maintenance markup)
States of operation	TX, AZ, CO, NV, CA, FL
Recent acquisition	FixRight Facilities (200 employees, 150 field technicians, facilities maintenance)

The VP of Technology has secured a $3.8M, 18-month program to consolidate tenant management, owner reporting, and maintenance operations onto a unified Salesforce platform - replacing the current PHP portal, integrating the acquired FixRight company, and enabling smart building capabilities.

CEO (Diana Reeves): “Every vacant day costs our owners money. We need a system that treats lease lifecycle, maintenance turnaround, and owner satisfaction as one connected process - not three separate silos.”

VP of Technology (Raj Mehta): “We have a custom PHP portal that is becoming unmaintainable. Our maintenance team just joined via acquisition and they have their own Salesforce org. I need a unified platform, not more duct tape.”

VP of Property Management (Carlos Vega): “My regional managers need to see everything in their territory - occupancy, rent collection, open maintenance tickets - but they absolutely cannot see properties outside their region.”

FixRight GM (Tanya Brooks): “Our technicians are in the field all day, many at properties with no cell reception in basements and parking garages. They need to complete work orders offline and sync when they have signal.”

VP of Finance (Michelle Park): “Owner distributions are already complex with CAM reconciliation across mixed-use properties. The new system must not introduce discrepancies between what Yardi calculates and what owners see on their portal.”

Director of Leasing (James Otero): “Our application-to-move-in cycle averages 14 days. Half of that is waiting on screening results and lease signing. I need my agents to see their pipeline clearly and act fast before we lose applicants to competing properties.”

Head of Smart Building (Wei Lin): “We have 120 smart properties today, but ownership wants 2,000+ within three years. Whatever we build for IoT cannot be a prototype that gets thrown away at scale.”

Current State

HomeNest Systems

System	Purpose	Key Details
Yardi Voyager	Property management (system of record)	Lease management, rent roll, CAM reconciliation, 12K properties, 45K tenants
QuickBooks Enterprise	Accounting	AP/AR, owner distributions, property-level P&L
Custom PHP portal	Tenant self-service	Maintenance requests, lease viewing, payment links; built 2016, single developer maintains it
Stripe	Payment processing	Tenant rent payments, ACH and card; $185M processed annually
TransUnion SmartMove	Tenant screening	Background and credit checks during lease application
IoT platform (Particle)	Smart building	2,400 smart locks, 1,800 HVAC sensors, 600 water leak detectors across 120 “smart” properties
Google Workspace	Email and collaboration	All 950 employees

The PHP portal handles 1,200 maintenance requests/month and serves 45,000 tenants. It has no mobile app, no real-time status updates, and a 40% tenant satisfaction score on maintenance communication. Average maintenance request resolution: 6.2 days.

FixRight Facilities (Acquired Company)

200 employees including 150 field technicians serving commercial properties. Previously a standalone maintenance contractor; now a wholly-owned HNPG subsidiary.

System	Purpose	Key Details
Salesforce org	Service Cloud	150 technician users, 5,000 accounts, work order management, basic scheduling
FieldConnect	Field dispatch	Third-party scheduling tool integrated with their Salesforce
ServiceTitan (historical)	Legacy job tracking	Decommissioned 2024, but 3 years of historical job data in SQL Server backup

FixRight’s Salesforce org: Service Cloud with 22 custom objects, 180 custom fields, 8 Apex triggers, 45 Flows. Work Order is the primary object with custom fields for job type, property access instructions, tenant contact, and completion photos. 150 technicians use Salesforce mobile with mixed iOS/Android devices (company-provided tablets and personal phones).

FixRight currently serves external commercial clients. Post-acquisition, they will transition to exclusively serving HNPG properties over 12 months while honoring existing contracts.

Business Requirements

Tenant Experience (Req 1-8)

1. Self-service portal for 45,000 tenants: submit maintenance requests, view lease details, see payment history, and communicate with property management
2. Mobile-responsive portal experience - 72% of tenants access via smartphone; native app experience is not required but the web portal must load in under 3 seconds on mobile networks
3. Real-time maintenance status tracking with automated notifications at each stage (received, assigned, scheduled, in-progress, completed)
4. Tenants see only their own unit, lease, and maintenance history - never another tenant’s data
5. Maintenance request satisfaction survey automatically sent after each completed work order, with results visible on regional manager dashboards
6. Push notification support for maintenance status changes and payment reminders via SMS and email; tenants must be able to configure notification preferences and opt out per channel
7. Tenant portal must support self-service password reset without calling HNPG support; target: fewer than 2% of login attempts requiring manual intervention
8. Tenants must be able to upload photos when submitting maintenance requests (water damage, broken fixtures) with a 10 MB per image limit and 5 images per request

Owner/Investor Portal (Req 9-15)

9. Self-service portal for 300 property owners: view portfolio performance, occupancy rates, financial summaries, and maintenance costs
10. Owners see only their own properties and associated tenants/financials - never another owner’s portfolio
11. Monthly owner statement generation with property-level P&L, rent collection rates, and maintenance expense breakdown
12. Owner approval workflow for maintenance expenditures exceeding a configurable threshold per property (typically $2,500-$5,000)
13. Owners can drill down from portfolio summary to individual property, building, unit, and lease detail levels
14. Owner portal must support document download for monthly statements, tax documents (1099s), and CAM reconciliation reports in PDF format
15. Owners with properties in multiple states see a consolidated portfolio view with state-level grouping

Maintenance and Field Service (Req 16-25)

16. Unified work order management for all 12,000 properties - both residential and commercial
17. Dispatch and schedule 150 field technicians with route optimization based on property location and technician skills
18. Technicians complete work orders on mobile devices with photo capture, parts used, time tracking, and tenant signature
19. Full offline capability for technicians in basements, parking garages, and areas without cell reception - sync when connectivity returns
20. Preventive maintenance scheduling: recurring work orders for HVAC inspections, fire safety checks, elevator service, pool maintenance (varies by property type)
21. Emergency maintenance escalation: water leaks, gas leaks, lockouts, HVAC failures in extreme weather trigger immediate dispatch and owner notification
22. Track technician certifications (HVAC, electrical, plumbing licenses) and auto-assign based on job requirements and valid certifications
23. Parts inventory tracking per technician van with automatic reorder alerts when stock drops below configurable thresholds
24. First-time fix rate tracking per technician - target 80% or higher across all property types
25. Work order SLA enforcement: emergency requests assigned within 30 minutes, urgent within 4 hours, standard within 24 hours

Smart Building / IoT (Req 26-30)

26. Smart lock events (entry/exit) visible on property and unit records for 2,400 locks
27. HVAC sensor alerts trigger preventive maintenance work orders when readings indicate potential failure
28. Water leak sensor alerts trigger emergency work orders with immediate technician dispatch
29. IoT platform must scale from 120 properties (4,800 devices) to 2,000+ properties (80,000+ devices) within 3 years without architectural rework
30. Sensor telemetry data retained for 90 days in Salesforce for operational use; historical sensor data beyond 90 days archived to external storage for trend analysis

Property and Lease Management (Req 31-37)

31. Property hierarchy: Owner > Property > Building > Unit with roll-up occupancy and financial metrics
32. Lease lifecycle tracking from application through screening, approval, move-in, renewal, and move-out
33. 60-day lease expiry alerts with automated renewal workflow that notifies the tenant, assigned leasing agent, and property manager
34. Vacancy tracking with days-on-market metrics and leasing agent performance dashboards
35. Lease application pipeline: leasing agents must see all applications for their assigned properties with stage tracking (Applied, Screening, Approved, Lease Sent, Signed, Move-In Scheduled)
36. Rent adjustment processing: bulk rent increases by property or building with owner approval before tenant notification
37. Move-out processing: automated inspection scheduling, security deposit reconciliation, and unit status change to Vacant with days-on-market clock starting

Data Migration (Req 38-43)

38. Initial load of 12,000 properties, 45,000 tenant records, and all active leases from Yardi Voyager with Yardi IDs preserved as external keys for ongoing sync
39. FixRight historical work orders (3 years from SQL Server backup plus current FixRight org data) loaded as read-only historical records, approximately 85,000 records total
40. Tenant portal migration in waves: 5,000 pilot group, then 20,000, then remaining 20,000, with 30-day parallel run before PHP portal decommission
41. PHP portal must remain operational until the new tenant portal is fully launched and validated with zero critical bugs and 95%+ login success rate
42. FixRight Salesforce org data migration at month 12-14: active accounts, contacts, open work orders, and technician assignment history migrated to HNPG org; completed work orders migrated as read-only
43. Data deduplication required: FixRight served some HNPG properties as an external contractor before acquisition, creating duplicate property and contact records across both orgs

Performance and SLA (Req 44-48)

44. Tenant portal page load time under 3 seconds for 95th percentile of requests, including mobile networks
45. Support 5,000 concurrent tenant portal sessions during peak hours (rent payment due dates, first of the month)
46. Field Service mobile app must sync queued offline work orders within 60 seconds of regaining connectivity
47. Owner portal financial dashboards must render within 5 seconds, including properties with 500+ units and 3 years of transaction history
48. Yardi bidirectional sync must complete each 15-minute cycle within 5 minutes, leaving 10 minutes of headroom for retries and monitoring

Compliance and Privacy (Req 49-53)

49. Fair Housing Act compliance: tenant screening criteria and rejection reasons must be consistently applied and auditable across all 6 states
50. Sensitive tenant PII (SSN collected during screening, bank account details for autopay) must be encrypted at rest and never stored in Salesforce; screening and payment systems remain the systems of record for that data; any residual sensitive fields in Salesforce (for example last four of SSN, driver license number) must be protected with Shield Platform Encryption
51. California tenants (approximately 8,000) subject to CCPA: tenant portal must support data access requests and deletion requests with a 45-day response window; financial records subject to tax and accounting retention (Yardi lease ledger, Stripe transaction history) are exempt from deletion under CCPA 1798.105(d) and must be documented as retained-with-exemption in the response
52. Audit trail for all access to tenant financial data (payment history, account balances) and owner financial data (distributions, P&L) — who accessed what record and when — with 7-year retention
53. Technician access to tenant units must be logged with timestamp and smart lock entry/exit events correlated to work order assignments for liability protection

Reporting and Analytics (Req 54-57)

54. Regional manager dashboard: occupancy rates, rent collection, maintenance backlog, tenant satisfaction by territory; plus leasing pipeline view scoped to the regional agent population (applications by stage, time-to-lease, conversion rates)
55. Owner dashboard: portfolio ROI, property-level P&L, maintenance spend vs. budget, occupancy trends
56. Maintenance operations dashboard: technician utilization, average resolution time, SLA compliance, emergency response times, first-time fix rates
57. Executive dashboard: company-wide occupancy, revenue per unit, maintenance cost per unit, tenant retention rates, with drill-down into leasing pipeline by property and agent

Security and Access (Req 58-63)

58. Tenants see only their unit and associated data — no visibility into other units, tenants, or owner information
59. Owners see only properties they own — no visibility into other owners’ portfolios or unrelated tenants
60. Regional managers see all properties, tenants, and maintenance within their territory — no cross-region access; maintenance technicians see only properties and work orders assigned to them (not lease terms or financial data); leasing agents see properties and applications within their assigned properties (not owner financials)
61. All sharing rule changes require Architecture Review Board approval and automated sharing verification tests before production deployment
62. Session timeout for owner portal set to 15 minutes of inactivity due to financial data sensitivity; tenant portal set to 60 minutes
63. Identity and provisioning: IdP group membership in Google Workspace must map deterministically to Salesforce Permission Set Groups via an automated sync, and external portal users must be provisioned through explicit registration handlers (Apex) that set profile, permission set group, and portal scoping on account creation

Governance and Development Lifecycle (Req 64-65)

64. Architecture Review Board (bi-weekly) reviews all data model changes, integration modifications, sharing rule updates, and portal configuration changes; CI/CD pipeline with automated PMD scan, unit test execution, and sharing model verification on every pull request; multi-org coexistence governance requires joint approval from VP Technology and FixRight GM for any MuleSoft bridge changes
65. Release cadence: bi-weekly production deployments at sprint boundaries; portal-facing changes require UX review and load test pass; emergency maintenance fixes (tenant safety) deployed same-day with VP Technology approval; post-program support model uses internal team of 3 admins and 4 developers with SI partner transitioning to managed services retainer

External Systems and Integration Volumes

System	Function	Protocol	Volume
Yardi Voyager	Lease, rent roll, tenant, property data (system of record)	REST API + SOAP	15,000 daily sync events
QuickBooks Enterprise	AP/AR, owner distributions, financial reporting	REST API (QB Online migration planned)	3,000 transactions/day
Stripe	Rent payments, application fees	REST webhooks	8,000 payment events/day
TransUnion SmartMove	Background/credit checks	REST API	200 screenings/day
Particle IoT	Smart locks, HVAC sensors, water leak detectors	REST webhooks + MQTT	45,000 sensor events/day
Google Workspace	Identity, email, calendar	SAML + Directory API	950 users
Twilio	SMS notifications (maintenance updates, payment reminders)	REST API	5,000 SMS/day
DocuSign	Lease signing	REST API	400 envelopes/day

Constraints

1. Yardi Voyager remains the system of record for all lease and financial data - Salesforce complements but does not replace Yardi
2. FixRight’s existing external client contracts must be honored for 12 months; their Salesforce org cannot be shut down until those contracts expire
3. The PHP portal must remain operational until the new tenant portal is fully launched and validated (parallel run required)
4. Stripe integration cannot change - all payment processing flows through Stripe
5. Budget: $3.8M total over 18 months (no contingency beyond 10%)
6. 150 field technicians use mixed devices (iOS tablets, Android phones) - solution must support both platforms
7. Smart building IoT covers only 120 of 12,000 properties currently; the solution must scale as more properties add sensors
8. No tenant PII (SSN, bank account numbers) stored in Salesforce - screening and payment systems hold sensitive financial data
9. FixRight’s 22 custom objects and 8 Apex triggers must be assessed and rationalized during migration, not blindly replicated

Stakeholders

Role	Name	Key Concern
CEO	Diana Reeves	Reducing vacancy rates, owner retention
VP Technology	Raj Mehta	Platform consolidation, eliminating PHP portal
VP Property Management	Carlos Vega	Regional visibility, lease lifecycle
VP Finance	Michelle Park	Owner reporting accuracy, financial reconciliation
FixRight GM	Tanya Brooks	Technician productivity, offline capability
Director of Leasing	James Otero	Application-to-move-in speed, agent dashboards
Head of Smart Building	Wei Lin	IoT scalability, sensor-to-action automation

Budget and Timeline

Item	Budget	Timeline
Phase 1: Core platform + Field Service	$1.6M	Months 1-7
Phase 2: Tenant portal + owner portal	$1.2M	Months 5-12
Phase 3: Smart building + analytics	$0.6M	Months 10-16
Contingency (10%)	$0.4M	As needed
Total	$3.8M	18 months

Budget includes SaaS license operating expense across the 18-month program window plus implementation services, infrastructure, and contingency. License scope covers 950 internal users across Sales, Service, and Field Service; 150 Field Service Mobile technician licenses; 45,000 tenants on Customer Community Plus Login; 300 owners on Customer Community Plus Member; CRM Analytics seats for executives and owner portal embedded analytics; Shield (Platform Encryption, Event Monitoring, Field Audit Trail); and MuleSoft Anypoint Platform.

IT staff: 12 internal (3 Salesforce admins, 4 developers, 2 integration specialists, 3 IT ops). SI partner: mid-size Salesforce consulting firm with 10-person team. FixRight IT: 2 people (both retained).

Known Risks

• Multi-org decision: FixRight’s Salesforce org must coexist for 12 months; migrating 150 technician users to the main org while maintaining external client access
• Portal concurrency profile: 45,000 tenant logins is modest by Experience Cloud standards; the scaling pressure is concurrent session spikes on rent due dates (first of month) and wave-based migration cutovers, not total user count
• Sharing complexity: Five distinct user populations (tenants, owners, regional managers, technicians, leasing agents) with non-overlapping visibility requirements
• Offline field service: Technicians in areas with zero connectivity need full work order completion capability
• Yardi dependency: Salesforce must stay synchronized with Yardi as the source of truth without creating conflicting records
• IoT growth: 120 smart properties today, but potentially 2,000+ within 3 years - solution must scale without rearchitecting
• Data migration complexity: Duplicate records across HNPG and FixRight orgs from pre-acquisition contractor relationship
• CCPA exposure: 8,000 California tenants with data access and deletion rights that span multiple systems (Salesforce, Yardi, Stripe, TransUnion)
• Budget concentration: $3.8M with only 10% contingency across a program that includes multi-org migration, dual portals, IoT, and 8 external integrations

Deliverables

Present all 9 CTA solution artifacts in 45 minutes + 45-minute Q&A:

1. System Landscape
2. Data Model / ERD
3. Role Hierarchy & Sharing Model
4. Integration Architecture
5. Identity & SSO
6. Data Migration Strategy
7. Governance Framework
8. Environment Strategy
9. Phased Delivery Roadmap

Board Strategy

This scenario has five distinct user populations with sharply different visibility needs. The sharing model and portal architecture are your make-or-break decisions. Nail those, then address the multi-org coexistence and field service offline requirements.

Key Implicit Requirements

The multi-org coexistence (12-month overlap), five-population sharing model, dual-portal architecture (tenant vs. owner), Yardi as system-of-record (not replacement), and offline field service for 150 technicians are the architectural pressure points. The IoT component is growing but currently limited to 120 properties - design for scale without over-engineering today.

---

Always verify against official Salesforce documentation

This content is study material for CTA exam preparation. Content compiled and presented with AI assistance. Not affiliated with Salesforce.