Blackbox Property Management
A custom vacancies page for a Hamilton property manager: unit listings, inquiry forms, team follow-up tracking and email that reliably arrives.
Blackbox Property Management manages 27 rental buildings across Hamilton and Brantford. Their website showed the properties, but had no way to list available units or take inquiries about them. We built a vacancies system their team updates themselves, with every inquiry tracked from first message to reply.
Delivered: custom WordPress vacancies plugin, inquiry tracking, email delivery setup, staff training. Platform: WordPress (GeneratePress).
The Problem
Blackbox needed to advertise vacant units and handle the inquiries that followed, but the site could not do either:
- There was nowhere to list units, prices or availability.
- Inquiries had no structured path, so the team had no record of who asked about which unit.
- Several staff share the leasing inbox, with no way to see who had already replied.
- The website’s hosting blocked outgoing email, so any form on the site risked failing silently.
What Was Built
Vacancy listings staff manage themselves. Staff add a unit in WordPress with rent, availability date, bedrooms, bathrooms, air conditioning, parking, laundry and photos. One status setting controls everything: Available units appear on the site, Application Pending units show a badge, and Leased units disappear automatically but stay saved for re-listing.
A Vacancies page renters can actually use. Units appear in the site’s existing style, filterable by location and size. Each listing has a photo slideshow and an inquiry button that pre-fills the form with that unit, so the team always knows exactly what someone is asking about.
Inquiry tracking for a shared inbox. Every inquiry is emailed to up to three staff and saved in WordPress. Staff mark inquiries as contacted, and the system records who replied and when. A count of unanswered inquiries sits in the admin menu, and the full list exports to a spreadsheet.
Connected to the rest of the site. The Properties page shows a “units available” link on any building with vacancies, and the header tab displays the live number of available units. Both update on their own as units are leased.
Email that actually arrives. The hosting provider blocked standard email ports, which would have stopped inquiry notifications reaching the team. We identified the block, moved delivery to a dedicated email service over a secure connection, and set up domain authentication alongside the client’s existing Microsoft 365 email without disrupting it.
Privacy built in. Inquiry forms include consent and a privacy notice link. Old inquiries delete automatically after a period the client chooses.
What the Client Said
“Jeff built our property management site in WordPress and created a custom plugin so that we could manage unit vacancies for our properties around Hamilton and Brantford ourselves. It works well and does everything we need.”
Blackbox Property Management
blackboxproperties.ca
Why a Custom Build
Real estate plugins are built for agents selling homes, with features a property manager would never use. A custom build gave Blackbox’s staff a simple screen with only the fields they need, no annual licence fees, and no dependence on a third-party plugin staying supported.
Does Your Business Need More Than a Brochure Website?
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