Every question, answered plainly

The Benchmark is a quarterly report from Stilwell that reads every repairs-and-maintenance invoice a property paid, prices each line item against cheaper verified suppliers, and shows exactly where the property overpaid and where to buy instead. It comes with an onboarding report covering the prior year, team and one-on-one training, ongoing support, and a money-back guarantee. It is analysis and evidence, not software the team has to run.

Every repairs-and-maintenance invoice the property paid in the period, line by line. The Benchmark works at the SKU level: each part, supply, and material on each invoice gets priced against cheaper verified suppliers. Stilwell does not sample or estimate — if a property posted a thousand small charges, it reads a thousand small charges. Multifamily maintenance spend is high transaction count and low value per transaction, so the overpayment hides in the lines, not the totals.

A report showing, for the quarter's repairs-and-maintenance spend, what the property paid for each line item, the verified cheaper price where one exists, the supplier offering it, and the savings on each line. It adds up to a single number — what the quarter should have cost — plus specific guidance on where to buy going forward. The Benchmark also includes training and ongoing support, so the findings turn into changed purchasing rather than a shelf document.

The prior year. Before the quarterly cadence begins, Stilwell analyzes the property's last twelve months of repairs-and-maintenance invoices the same way — every line, priced against cheaper verified suppliers. The onboarding report establishes the baseline: what the property has been overpaying, on which items, from which vendors. The quarterly editions of The Benchmark then track spend from there.

No. The Benchmark is a delivered report, not a platform. Stilwell does the analysis; the property receives the findings, plus team and one-on-one training on how to act on them. There are no logins to manage, no dashboards to maintain, and no new system for site staff to adopt. The only workflow change is optional: buying flagged items from the cheaper verified supplier the report identifies.

An invoice or general-ledger export from your property management software — the repairs-and-maintenance invoice detail your system already stores. Yardi, RealPage, AppFolio, Entrata, MRI, Buildium, and ResMan exports all work. Stilwell takes the data from there. There is no integration project and no new data entry; the analysis runs on records the property already generates in the normal course of paying its bills.

It depends mostly on how quickly the invoice data arrives. Once Stilwell has the export from your property management system, analysis of the prior year begins — the pacing item is data delivery, not the analysis itself. Properties that send a clean export quickly get their onboarding report quickly. From there, The Benchmark moves to its quarterly cadence.

No. Stilwell built The Benchmark to require no process change. Site teams keep buying the way they already buy, from the systems they already use, and the analysis runs on invoice data the property already generates. What teams get back is a list of specific items they are overpaying for and a verified cheaper supplier for each — information, not new procedure. Whether to act on any line stays their call.

Invoice and general-ledger exports from Yardi, RealPage, AppFolio, Entrata, MRI, Buildium, and ResMan all work. The Benchmark runs on the invoice data itself, not on a live connection to the software, so any system that can export invoice-level detail can feed the analysis. If your platform is not on that list, the only question is whether it exports invoice detail — most systems do.

No. The Benchmark shows, for each overpaid line item, a verified cheaper price from a real supplier — and leaves the decision with you. Some findings will justify moving where you buy an item; others may be worth raising with the current vendor instead. Stilwell's role is to prove where the money is and where the better price is. What the property does with that evidence is its own call.

On average, Stilwell's analysis has found $22,546 in annual savings for a 200-unit property, and the average return on the product investment has been 4.51x. Those are observed averages from completed analyses, not projections — every underlying dollar is a specific line item priced against a verified cheaper supplier. Individual results vary with how a property already buys, which is why The Benchmark carries a money-back guarantee.

It means every cheaper price in the report was a real, available price from a real supplier at the time of analysis. Stilwell does not use estimates, category averages, or "up to" figures. When The Benchmark flags a line item as overpaid, it names the supplier offering the lower price and states that price. The savings total is the sum of those line-level, checkable differences — nothing modeled, nothing extrapolated.

If the verified potential annual savings The Benchmark identifies do not reach at least the amount invested in the product, Stilwell refunds the fee. Terms apply, but the mechanics are that simple: the analysis has to find more than it costs, in real supplier-verified prices, or the property gets its money back. The guarantee holds because the findings are checkable — every claimed saving is a specific price from a specific supplier.

The fee comes back. Under Stilwell's money-back guarantee, if verified potential annual savings do not reach at least the amount invested, the fee is refunded, subject to the guarantee's terms. The property keeps what the analysis showed — a line-level accounting of its repairs-and-maintenance spend against real market prices. In practice, the downside of running The Benchmark is a documented confirmation that the property is already buying well.

No, and Stilwell is direct about that. The Benchmark identifies and verifies the savings; capturing them means actually buying the flagged items from the cheaper suppliers the report names. That is why the product includes team training, one-on-one training, and ongoing support — the goal is changed purchasing, not a filed report. The savings figure is what is available, verified line by line. Realizing it is a purchasing decision the report makes specific and easy to act on.

Three buyer types, all in US multifamily: property management companies with 2,000 or more units, real estate investment firms with 1,000 or more units, and asset management companies with 2,000 or more units. The thresholds exist because repairs-and-maintenance spend scales with unit count, and The Benchmark's line-level analysis pays for itself fastest at portfolio scale. Stilwell built the product for organizations operating at that size.

The analysis itself is property-level: The Benchmark reads the invoices one property paid and reports on that property's spend. A portfolio engagement is that same analysis run across the properties in it. Stilwell serves firms at portfolio scale — management companies and asset managers with 2,000-plus units, investment firms with 1,000-plus — but the unit of work is always the individual property and its actual invoices.

No. Stilwell serves US multifamily only — apartment properties, not other asset classes and not other countries. The Benchmark's pricing work depends on verifying real, available prices from real suppliers, and that supplier and pricing coverage is built for the US market. Properties and portfolios outside the United States are out of scope.

The Benchmark covers repairs and maintenance and the supplies that go with it: parts, materials, and the items site teams buy to keep units running. It does not cover utilities, property taxes, or insurance — those are different problems with different levers, and invoice-level supplier comparison does not apply to them. The focus is deliberate: maintenance is where a property posts a high volume of small purchases, which is exactly where line-level price analysis finds money.

That is exactly what the analysis tests. National agreements set prices on some items; The Benchmark checks the prices actually paid on every line, including the ones agreements never touched — niche parts, one-off orders, local vendor invoices. If your purchasing is already tight, the report will show that. And Stilwell's money-back guarantee covers this case directly: if verified potential annual savings do not reach the amount invested, the fee is refunded.