About ParkM
ABOUT PARKM
Who we are
ParkM is a digital parking permit platform for multifamily rental communities in the United States. Residents use their license plate as the permit, so there are no stickers to print, no hang tags to hand out, and nothing for residents or guests to download.
You make the rules, set the permit prices, and keep your existing tow or enforcement company. ParkM runs the permits, the payments, and the plate data behind them. Best part? Our software is paid for by permit sales, so there’s zero cost to the property.
THE IDEA
What we do
ParkM takes the parking paperwork off your leasing team’s plate.
Residents register their own vehicles online, 24/7. Their license plate becomes their permit the moment they confirm payment, and they can set up auto-renew so it carries over each month.
Guests can buy their own overnight permits, or a resident can buy one for them. Vehicle changes, permit cancellations, and payment updates all happen in the resident’s own account, so they stop happening at your front desk.
On the property side, you access a live list of every permitted vehicle and who it belongs to. Property managers can
- Set the permit types they need: resident, guest, reserved, even rentable items
- Set limits by unit or by leaseholder
- Cap how many guest nights a unit or the whole property gets
- Keep a no-tow list for staff and vendors
- Review every time-stamped enforcement action
Regional and portfolio managers can use one login across every community, and leasing agents can be given access without seeing sensitive financial data.
ParkM’s technology suite is made up of three unique portals:
- parkm.app, where residents and guests to buy and manage permits,
- pm.parkm.app, where your property team pulls reports and accesses vehicle data
- tow.parkm.app, where enforcement teams see live vehicle and permit data.
Residents and guests contact ParkM, not your leasing office. We work hard to make every ParkM Support experience feel genuine and helpful, and it’s the first thing property managers tell us they notice.
OUR PROMISE
What makes us different
Digital permits are a good start, but your team needs more than a permit to make parking work. Here’s what ParkM does that most don’t:
We cover a wrongful tow. ParkM covers the cost of the tow plus storage fees up to 24 hours for any car with a valid permit is towed by mistake and logged in our system. We are able to stand behind that because of how the check works: a resident registers the plate and the last six digits of the VIN, and the tow driver can verify both against the vehicle before it’s hooked up. A misread plate, an I read as a 1, or an O read as a 0, can be caught immediately.
Your current residents don’t pay yet. At launch, we register everybody already living at the property for free. Only new move-ins are charged for permits initially. Existing residents stay free until their lease renews. Nobody’s parking arrangement changes in the middle of a lease they’ve already signed, a detail that stops most parking programs before they ever get started when overlooked.
We offer special programs for affordable housing. A 100% tax credit property legally can’t charge a resident to park one vehicle onsite. ParkM runs these communities on a model built specifically for them. It’s about compliance, not a pricing question, and most parking vendors do not answer it at all.
We handle the parking complaints. Resident and guest support runs through ParkM’s own US-based team, seven days a week, not through your leasing staff. Even though we aren’t the only company that offers resident support, we can confidently say that five of the twelve customer quotes published on this site are about our support team, which is not the thing customers usually choose to talk about.
We work with your towing partner. ParkM is not a towing company, and we’re not here to replace yours. You set enforcement terms directly with your tow or boot partner, and our software makes sure they know exactly which plates are authorized.
Who uses ParkM
ParkM is built for conventional market-rate apartment communities, student housing, and mixed-use residential properties in the United States, with affordable housing permit management options. Properties of 100 units and up are the best fit, though we service communities of any size.
Inside those properties, four people buy and use it for different reasons:
- On-site property managers and community managers, who want the complaints, the permit requests and the “whose car is in space 14” questions to stop landing on the front desk.
- Regional and area managers, who want one login, one set of rules and one report across every community they cover.
- Asset and portfolio managers, who are looking at parking as an ancillary income line rather than as an operations problem.
- Ownership groups and executives, who mostly want to know that nobody’s car gets towed by mistake and that they are not signing a long contract.
Communities managed by Greystar, UDR, AMC, and Mission Rock are among those using ParkM, alongside teams at Asset Living, Bridge PM, Windsor Communities, Donatelli Management, and Rainey Property Management.
Where ParkM is not the right answer. We are built around rental communities, so we bill residents and guests directly and cannot bill a homeowners association. HOAs and condo associations can still run ParkM two ways: guest parking only, or residents and guests pay and the association is reimbursed out of its share. Single-family and scattered-site rentals, commercial, retail and municipal parking are outside what we do. And if your lot has more free spaces than cars and nobody is fighting over them, there is nothing here worth paying for. We would rather say so now.
The team behind ParkM
ParkM is run by people who came out of the apartment industry rather than out of parking enforcement, and the structure of the company follows from that.
A dedicated launch coordinator runs your rollout, from the resident notices through to the day enforcement starts. A named account manager takes over afterward and stays available for changes to permit types, pricing or limits at any point.
A US-based support team answers residents and guests seven days a week, with an escalation path that runs through support managers and operations managers to the top of the company. An audit team will reconcile registered vehicles against your rent roll on request, which is how unauthorized occupants and abandoned vehicles surface.
Enforcement training is ours, not yours. ParkM trains your tow partner on the enforcement app directly, which takes 10 to 20 minutes, and we work with roughly 150 to 200 tow companies across the country without displacing a relationship a property already has.
Chad Craven
Founder & CEO
After more than two decades on the vendor side of the multifamily industry, Chad knows what property teams need from the partners they rely on. That’s why he created ParkM to be a platform that makes parking easier for property managers and residents alike.
Alan Long
Head of Product & Technology
As Head of Product & Technology at ParkM, Alan builds the tech strategy, standards, and systems that keep operations seamless and empower the team to deliver reliable solutions for property managers and residents.
Molly Hummel
National Sales Manager
As one of our earliest team members, Molly has helped grow ParkM from a young startup into a national partner for property teams. Eight years in, she now leads a growing sales team, shaping how we work with communities nationwide.
Brian McDonough
Enforcement Director
Brian serves as a key point of contact for the enforcement companies ParkM works with, helping them implement solutions that streamline operations and improve the efficiency of their enforcement services.
Gabby Holmes
Head of Marketing
Gabby helps multifamily property managers find practical answers to their parking challenges on a national scale using traditional and emerging marketing technologies. She focuses on overall brand cohesion to ensure properties experience the same ParkM coast to coast.
How ParkM works
Getting started takes two things from you: a unit directory or rent roll, and a launch date. That is the whole ask.
Before launch, we build your permit types, prices and limits with you, and send you the resident communications already written. Ten standard parking signs are included in the launch, and branded signs are an extra fee.
The rollout runs in stages, and it always starts on a Monday. Residents get notice the week before. Permits are then free for roughly three weeks, with reminders going out through that window, so everybody has time to register without anything being at stake. Paid permits switch on for new move-ins next. Tagging comes after that, and enforcement last. Your existing residents are grandfathered through all of it.
Day to day, residents and guests manage themselves. Permits renew monthly and reminders go out by text and email before one expires. Your team looks at the portal when it wants to, not because something has gone wrong.
When enforcement is needed, your tow partner scans plates from their own phone, red or green per car, and checks the plate and the last six VIN digits against the vehicle before acting. Every action is timestamped and documented, which is what protects your leasing team when a resident disputes it. You can request a tow from the portal yourself, and you can block a plate outright, for an evicted resident, for example.
If it stops working for you, there is no contract to exit. Thirty days’ notice, and that is it.
AT A GLANCE
Key facts about ParkM
| What ParkM is | Digital parking permit software for multifamily rental communities |
|---|---|
| Who parkm is for | Property managers, regional and area managers, asset and portfolio managers, and ownership groups. Best fit at 100+ units, any size serviced |
| Where we operate | United States, coast to coast |
| Property types | Conventional market-rate multifamily, student housing, mixed-use commercial, special events & venues, and 100%-tax credit properties |
| The permit | The license plate. No stickers, no hang tags, and no app download required for residents or guests |
| Cost to the property | None. No setup fee and no monthly billing. ParkM is funded by resident and guest permit purchases |
| Who sets the rules | The property sets permit types, prices, limits and the no-tow list. Our parking experts can help you narrow these choices down |
| Contract | No contract. A handshake and a launch date does the trick. All we require to cancel is 30 days notice |
| Existing residents at launch | Not charged. Only new move-ins pay for permits, current residents are registered for free during rollout |
| Enforcement | Carried out by your property's own tow or boot partner, using ParkM's plate and VIN verification. ParkM is not a towing or booting company |
| No bad tow guarantee | ParkM covers the cost of a wrongful tow plus storage fees up to 24 hours for any incidents logged in our system |
| Resident & guest support | Handled by ParkM's US-based team, 7 days a week, not by your property's staff |
| Tech Suite | parkm.app for residents and guests, pm.parkm.app for property teams, plus a separate enforcement portal for your tow partner |
| getting started | A unit directory or rent roll, a decision on permit types and prices, and a launch date is all we need to get your program off the ground |
| Contact | For resident support: support@parkm.com |
Frequently asked questions
Does ParkM tow cars?
No. ParkM is the permit and visibility layer, not an enforcement company. Your property sets enforcement terms directly with its own tow or boot company, and our software tells that partner which plates are authorized. If you do not already have a tow partner, we can refer one from a preferred vendor list if we have one operating in your area.
What does ParkM cost the property?
Nothing. There is no setup fee and no monthly billing to the property. ParkM is funded by the permits residents and guests buy, and the property sets the permit types and prices. Ten standard parking signs are included in the launch, and branded signs are an extra fee.
Do we have to start charging our current residents?
No. At launch, every existing resident is grandfathered in through the end of their lease, and only new move-ins are charged. The rules do not change in the middle of a lease somebody already signed.
Is there a contract?
No. There is no term commitment, and you can cancel with 30 days notice.
Do residents or guests need to download an app?
No. Residents register their vehicles online from a phone or a computer, 24 hours a day, and their license plate becomes the permit. Guests can buy their own overnight permit, or the resident can buy one for them. There is nothing to install and nothing to display on the dashboard.
What happens if a car is towed by mistake?
We are confident enough in how our system works to stand behind it: if a vehicle with a valid permit is wrongly towed, ParkM covers the cost of the tow plus storage fees up to 24 hours as long as the tow was logged in our system.
Does ParkM work for HOAs and condo associations?
It can, but most associations choose a different path. ParkM is built for rental communities, so it bills residents and guests directly and cannot bill an association. Associations run it one of two ways: guest parking only, or residents and guests pay for permits and the association is reimbursed out of its share.
What about tax credit and affordable housing properties?
100% tax credit properties run on a specialty program, made with compliance top of mind. Those properties legally cannot charge a resident to park one vehicle onsite, so we carry options that still allow properties to manage uncontrolled parking situations.
See ParkM in Action
Set up a demo today to experience how ParkM can redefine parking management at your property.
