AI inspections for AppFolio

Overview

An AppFolio Inspection is a record that someone walked the unit and what they chose to flag; it is not a comparison against how the unit looked at move-in. The inspection runs on a template that adapts to the unit's bedroom and bathroom count, holds the photos and notes taken in the AppFolio Property Manager app, marks items that need follow up, and can be shared with the resident for a digital signature. Work orders created from it carry its notes and photos into the Unit Turn Board. What nobody in that chain does is open the move-in photos next to the move-out photos, room by room, for every unit that turns. RapidEye reads the photos already sitting on your inspections and work orders, plus the unit, the dates and the template's rooms, and returns one finding per change: what it is, where it is, how bad it is, and which of the two dated photos shows it.

How it works with AppFolio

AppFolio organises a tenancy around its inspections: a move-in inspection the resident countersigns, routine inspections during the lease, a move-out inspection when notice is given, and work orders that spin out of any of them onto the Unit Turn Board. Each of those is a moment when someone on your team is standing in the unit with the app open, and each photo they take there is something RapidEye can read.

• The move-in inspection. This is the baseline, and the one set of photos both parties agree on. RapidEye reads it room by room and holds it for the life of the tenancy: the state of the carpet at the bedroom door, the countertop by the stove, the blinds, the tub surround. Nothing is returned yet; this is what everything later is measured against.
• Routine and preventative inspections. A quarterly or annual walk mostly produces photos nobody compares to anything. RapidEye compares them to move-in and to the last routine set, and returns what has changed while the resident is still in the unit: a water stain spreading under the kitchen sink, a screen gone from a window, a wall that has been repainted a shade off. Caught mid-lease, these become work orders or a conversation rather than a dispute at move-out.
• The move-out inspection. The comparison the whole chain exists for. For each spot in the template, RapidEye returns what differs from move-in and whether it reads as tenant damage, ordinary wear, or something that was already in the move-in set. A hypothetical two-bedroom might come back with three findings: a burn on the laminate counter that was not there at move-in, scuffed baseboards that read as wear, and a cracked bathroom tile that the move-in photo already shows, so it is not the departing resident's. Each finding shows both photos with the tenancy dates between them.
• Work orders created from an inspection. An item marked for follow up becomes a work order that carries the inspection's notes and photos, and a technician working it in the field takes photos of their own. RapidEye reads the before and the after and reports the work order that was closed with the same drip under the sink still showing, or a patch that was never painted.
• The Unit Turn Board. Units with upcoming move-out dates land on the board automatically, and the turn is done when the last work order closes. RapidEye reads the last photos taken in the unit before it goes back to leasing against your standard for rent-ready, so the unit that gets shown next week is actually the one in the photos.

Every finding names the property and unit, the room and spot, the type of problem, a severity, the two photos and the dates between them, and a suggested next step. It lands in the RapidEye dashboard and, if you want, a Slack channel or an inbox for the property team. What happens in AppFolio next, a work order, a charge at move-out or nothing at all, is your decision in your system. And if your team documents units differently, on video walkthroughs, with an inspection format of your own, or with photos from another app, that is something we set up with you rather than a reason it will not work.

How to connect AppFolio to RapidEye

1. An AppFolio Property Manager account with Inspections in use. Your move-in, move-out and routine inspections run on AppFolio inspection templates, so each one is tied to a property, a unit and a date. The template's rooms are what RapidEye uses to line up one inspection's photos against the next.
2. Photos taken inside the inspection. Your team takes the photos in the AppFolio Property Manager app as part of the inspection, and RapidEye reads those. If a team documents units some other way, or does not photograph move-ins yet, a RapidEye capture link opens on any phone with no app to install, a fixed set of angles per room, taken before the inspection is finished.
3. Add RapidEye as a user. In AppFolio Property Manager, add a user named Rapid Eye with the email support@rapideyeinspections.com and access to the properties you want covered. We accept the invite and email you when the first findings are ready.

Nothing changes for the people in the field. They open the same inspection on the same phone and take the same photos; the difference is that someone now reads all of them.

How an AppFolio Inspection works, from move-in to the Unit Turn Board

Checked against AppFolio's product pages and blog, September 2026. AppFolio's help centre sits behind a customer login, so the facts here come from what AppFolio publishes publicly.

AppFolio Property Manager is a residential property management system for single-family, multifamily, student, affordable and association portfolios, and Inspections is one of the tools listed under its Maintenance product alongside Work Orders, Online Maintenance Requests, the Unit Turn Board, Common Area Maintenance and Mobile Violations. According to AppFolio's product documentation (appfolio.com), an inspection is done on a mobile device in the AppFolio Property Manager app: the inspector takes photos and notes and marks items that need follow up, with or without a data connection, and the inspection syncs to AppFolio once the phone reconnects. Photos can be viewed and edited in a gallery view. The templates behind an inspection are customisable, and AppFolio's own maintenance team describes them as adapting to the bedroom and bathroom count of the unit being inspected. A finished inspection can be shared with owners and residents, and residents can sign it digitally. From inside the inspection, flagged items become work orders that carry the inspection's notes and photos with them, and every work order on a vacant unit is tracked on the Unit Turn Board.

Laid out along a tenancy, that is the record AppFolio keeps at each stage, and the column on the right is what RapidEye reads from it.

Stages as AppFolio describes them on its product and blog pages. A filled marker means RapidEye reads photos at that stage.

What one AppFolio Inspection holds

Does AppFolio compare move-out photos to move-in photos?

Not automatically, from what AppFolio publishes. Its product pages describe taking photos and notes inside an inspection, marking follow-up items, offline capture and sync, a photo gallery view, work orders created from the inspection, and sharing with residents for signature. Its maintenance page describes the Realm-X Maintenance Performer analysing images that residents submit with maintenance requests, which is intake triage for a request that has just arrived. None of those pages describes putting one inspection's photos next to an earlier inspection's photos of the same room and reporting the difference. That comparison is the step a property manager does by eye when a deposit is in dispute, for the one unit in dispute. RapidEye does it for every unit that turns, on the photos already in AppFolio, and hands back the two dated photos for each change so the deduction, or the decision not to make one, has its evidence attached.

AppFolio integration FAQ