Associated Realty Property Management

The third team in.The first to get it live.

Case Study

Associated Realty Property Management

About The Project

A two-year-old redesign had already defeated two development teams. The real problem was not the homepage. It was 360+ legacy properties, fragmented floorplan data, operational forms, and a search experience that had to understand all of it.

Role: Design & development
Platform: WordPress / Houzez
Investment: $7.5K engagement
Launched: June 2026

Executive approveddirection

The executive-approved ARPM website direction displayed across the complete Figma presentation

The brief beneath the brief

“After attempting to do this with two other dev teams and failing, you made it happen for us and it’s brilliant.”

ARPM project team

The redesigned ARPM property search displayed on a Mac Studio monitor

Not a redesign. A rescue mission.

ARPM had served State College renters since 1978. Behind its dated interface sat a living operational system that changed every day during leasing season.

The upper portion of ARPM's legacy rentals website

The lower listings and operational footer of ARPM's legacy website

A clean rebuild could not erase the business underneath it. Existing applications still needed to collect fees through PayPal. Property teams still needed CSV exports. Galleries, amenities, floorplans, and availability had to survive without forcing the client to rebuild hundreds of listings by hand.

Legacy properties: 360+
Failed teams before us: 2
Percent mobile traffic: 80%

A modern leasing experience,
without abandoning 1978.

Maroon remained the anchor. The existing mark stayed recognizable. Around it, the interface became quieter, faster to scan, and dramatically more useful on mobile.

01
Intent after inventory
Research, development, and strategic planning for growth.
02
Availability at a glance
Status belongs on the card, not buried in the detail page.
03
Real content for real approval
Figma used ARPM photography, mission, and inventory before the president review.

The modern ARPM leasing experience displayed on an iPad held in two hands

Client Reaction

“That’s beautiful and clean. Truly what we hoped you might come up with. Amazing.”

The approved ARPM mobile About page displayed in an iPhone mockup

Three data worlds. One honest interface.

The breakthrough was not choosing between old and new. It was building a bridge that allowed both to work together.

Legacy shortcodes

Floorplan tabs embedded inside years of property descriptions

ACF property data

Amenities, responsibilities, pricing tables, operational truth

Houzez fields

Modern status, search, maps, cards, and future inventory

Custom
Bridge

The Output

One searchable property model

Any floorplan can match. Bed counts show honest ranges. Available inventory rises first.

04 / Search as Product

Find the right home.
Not the right database field.

The final search understood the renter’s question even when the answer lived across different generations of property data.

The redesigned ARPM property search showing honest filters and available inventory — Intent and filters work together Property type, location, bedrooms, pricing, features, and availability.

An ARPM property page showing bedroom ranges and recovered floorplan information — Ranges instead of misleading first values. A building with one, two, and three bedroom plans displays and filters as one through three.

The Business Results

“We truly believe that we have the best web search in state College compared to our competitors.”

05 / The Miracle

Hundreds of floorplans.
Zero full rewrite.

The previous site stored floorplan features as old bracketed tab code inside property descriptions. Re-entering every listing was the wall that stopped the first team.

A custom parser read those old tabs and transformed them into a modern button experience. Structured ACF pricing remained intact. Attached media became the gallery automatically.

“Brilliant idea on parsing those short codes.”

ARPM property detail showing recovered floorplan controls and gallery

Attached galleries recovered automatically

Legacy tabs parsed into clean floorplan controls

Existing application and payment flow preserved

06 / Getting It Live

The glamorous part:
knowing what not to do.

A giant migration package failed overnight. WP Engine restored the backup. We stopped forcing a fragile route and used the host’s native staging-to-production push instead.

DESIGN APPROVED

Real Content in Figma

Legacy shortcodesACF property dataHouzez fields

Custom Bridge

One searchable property model

LEGACY BRIDGE

Old and new data aligned

Old Site Plugins→Migrated to

New Site

PLUGIN MIGRATION

Size wall and failed unpack

Dev Site

Host-Native Push

Production Site

HOST-NATIVE PUSH

Dev mirrored to production

ARPM.COM

Polished Through July

07 / The Outcome

Confidence,
restored.

The project launched with its property history preserved, its applications operating, and its most important customer journey rebuilt around actual renter behavior.