We bought OpenVia.
OpenVia is the system that opens gates and building doors for the people doing business with your property when nobody is there to open the door with a smile. It bolts onto the gate controllers, call boxes, and access systems you already own, and puts the key in a smartphone. No new hardware. No rip-and-replace.
We've used it since the start. It's how a renter on a Self-Guided Tour gets from the street, through the gate, through the front door, and to the kiosk without anyone on site letting them in. Owning it means we control that whole path now, end to end. No gaps, and no third party in the middle of our most important moment: the first thirty seconds a renter spends on your property.
But leasing is only one part of it.
Over the last year, something became obvious. The tour was the reason we built the access path, but the tour is not the only thing walking through it. Leasing has become one part of a much larger ecosystem we've been quietly supporting on site with this platform.
Think about who comes onto your property in a week:
- Prospects on tours
- Maintenance vendors
- Make-ready crews
- Cleaners
- Inspectors
- Parcel deliveries
- Trash removal vendors
- Contractors you've never met
Every one of them needs to get through a gate or a door. Every one of them is on a schedule. And every one of them is someone's problem to let in.
That used to be fine. There was a leasing office with people in it. Someone buzzed the door, waved from the window, handed over a key, and wrote a name on a sticky note.
There are fewer people in the office now.
Staffing across multifamily is going down, and it's not coming back. Properties are stretched thinner than at any point in our industry's history. One manager now covers the job duties that used to be split across several employees. The office is closed more than it's open. Nobody has figured out how to put a property manager in two places at once.
But the vendors still come. The deliveries still come. The make-ready crew still shows up Tuesday morning whether the office is open or not. A "We Will Return" clock sign on the door doesn't help any of them reach the gate, get to the unit, and finish the job.
Technology can. That is why this acquisition matters. No matter how your property is staffed, Pineapple keeps business flowing.
So here's the question that keeps us up at night.
If someone enters your property and nobody writes it down, did it happen?
To you, no. To your insurance carrier, yes. To the resident whose package is missing, yes. To the owner asking why a vacant unit has a hole in the wall, yes.
What you need is a ledger.
Not a camera. A camera shows you a shape at 2 a.m. and leaves you to figure out who it was.
A list. Every person who came onto the property, when they came, which door or gate they used, and why they were there. Name, time, entry point, reason. Every time.
If a unit gets damaged, you know who was in the building. If something goes missing, you know who was in the building. If an insurance representative asks "who has been on your property this month," you have an answer instead of a guess, and you don't have to wait for a manager to pull it together. The data flows straight into your corporate workflow.
Most properties don't have this. They have a clipboard, a text thread, and a maintenance guy who "knows everybody." That works right up until he takes another job, and the list leaves with him.
That's operational continuity. The property keeps running, and keeps its record, whether there's a person in the office or not.
Operational standardization
Continuity is one property. Standardization is all of them.
Owners with ten, fifty, or two hundred sites don't just need each property to keep a record. They need every property to keep the same record, the same way, every day. Right now it's different at every site, because it depends on whoever is working the desk. We've seen this before.
"When we were starting my last company, CheckpointID, we saw that everyone had an ID policy, but how it was actually carried out changed from property to property. That inconsistency is where Fair Housing liability lives. This is a full-circle moment for me. Instead of standardizing an ID policy, we're standardizing the property ledger across every site. In our industry, it's the simplest, most everyday things that slip through the cracks. This acquisition closes that gap."
Steve Bonaventure, Founder & CEO, PineappleAgnostic access = future-proof infrastructure
Pineapple was the first to launch an agnostic building-access platform to replace the first generation of IoT solutions built around expensive smart locks and video intercoms. We work with the keys, fobs, and systems a property already has.
OpenVia is the next step in that same approach. It takes the agnostic model beyond the unit door and extends it to every access-control door, driveway gate, and pedestrian gate on the property. Same idea, bigger footprint: use what you already own, add a layer of software on top, and stop writing checks for hardware.
"I'm excited to see the vision for OpenVia brought to scale with Pineapple. The apartment industry invested heavily in access control over the decades, but that infrastructure is aging, and it's aging at a time when assets are more constrained than ever on capital projects. OpenVia future-proofs what's already in the ground by taking traditionally expensive hardware and putting it in the consumer's hands, on their smartphone."
Patrick Campbell, CEO, OpenViaAbout OpenVia
OpenVia is a Birmingham, Alabama–based access technology company that provides smartphone-based entry for multifamily and commercial properties. Its retrofit devices connect to a property's existing gates, access-control systems, and intercoms, so owners get modern features like smartphone entry, guest passes, delivery access, and a Virtual Callbox™ without replacing hardware. OpenVia integrates with leading gate and access systems, including LiftMaster, Brivo, Honeywell, DoorKing, and Continental Access, and with major property management platforms. Learn more at openvia.com.
About Pineapple
Pineapple is a Concord, Massachusetts–based proptech company that helps apartment operators get units turned and leased faster. Its platform pairs on-site kiosks with secure, hardware-agnostic property access and trained leasing concierges backed by AI, delivered as three stacking services: Self-Guided Turns, Self-Guided Tours, and Self-Guided Leasing. Pineapple works with the keys, fobs, and access systems a property already has, so properties can keep operating when the office is closed. Pineapple was founded by Steve Bonaventure, a three-time proptech founder whose previous companies include Apartment Guardian and CheckpointID. Learn more at tourwithpineapple.com.