Your Yardi PHA renewal arrived. It's up 22%. Your director is asking what the cutover would cost — in money, in calendar days, in HUD audit risk — if you walked. Here's the honest answer, with the 14-day timeline our migration team has actually run.

Our biases, on the table. We're an ExactEstate post. We name the gaps — ours and Yardi's — with sources. If a fact below is wrong, email corrections@exactestate.com and we'll publish the fix.

The Yardi PHA reality, in one paragraph

Yardi PHA is a modern UI bolted onto a general ledger that was designed for conventional multifamily. The 50058 module, the EIV reconciliation tools, the HAP register, the 8823 workflow, the certifications module — those are paid add-ons that sit on top of the base Voyager license. Every PHA we've talked to who's renewed a Yardi contract in 2025-2026 has a slightly different module mix, which means there is no single "Yardi PHA" SKU; there is a stack of modules priced individually, and the renewal is the moment Yardi's account team rebalances the stack toward what they want to sell you next.

The renewal math, in numbers

The mid-market PHAs we've migrated in the last 12 months were paying $4–$8 per unit per month for the Yardi stack, before professional services. For a 500-unit PHA, that's $2,000–$4,000 a month, or $24K–$48K a year. A 22% YoY increase pushes a $36K contract to $43.9K. Over five years, with stacked annual increases at the same rate, the $36K contract becomes $97K in year five.

For context: ExactEstate charges $3 per unit per month, flat, no module fees, no per-seat fees. A 500-unit PHA pays $1,500 a month — $18K a year — for everything in the stack: 50058, EIV, HAP, 8823, certifications, NSPIRE-V evidence packets, HOTMA module. The annualized delta vs. Yardi at $36K is $18K. Vs. Yardi at $48K, $30K. That's the budget you can put toward a maintenance tech or two part-time inspectors.

The 14-day cutover, day by day

Here is the actual migration cadence we run. A PHA director who has done one Yardi renewal cycle can read this and judge whether the timeline is realistic. (Spoiler: it is, for portfolios under 2,500 units. Larger portfolios stage their properties in waves of 1,000–1,500 units; the per-wave cadence still matches what's below.)

Day 1–3: Export

You generate the export from Yardi: residents, leases, certifications, 50058 history (including frozen snapshots from prior calendar years), EIV reconciliation history, HAP register, 8823s, work orders, custom fields, attachments. Yardi's export takes longer than the docs suggest because the certifications history and the EIV reconciliation history are in separate stores. Plan three calendar days for the export to finish and to verify counts against your live property report.

Day 4–7: Cleanse and map

Your data lands in a staging schema we provision for your tenant. We map Yardi's resident IDs, household IDs, and unit IDs to ExactEstate's IDs. We map your custom fields one-to-one to ExactEstate custom fields; what we don't have, we add. We resolve the frozen-snapshot problem: every prior calendar year's 50058 needs to remain immutable so a HUD review three years from now can still reconcile. We map your chart of accounts and your HAP payment history into the ExactEstate ledger.

Day 8–10: Import and reconcile

We import into a non-production tenant that mirrors your portfolio structure. We run a reconciliation report: total residents, total active certifications, total 50058s by calendar year, total HAP paid YTD, total open work orders. If a number is off by more than one tenant, we trace the delta back to the export. We don't run a second import; we fix the first one until the reconciliation report is exact.

Day 11–12: Staff training

Two days of live training, recorded, organized by role: occupancy specialists, compliance officers, accountants, maintenance. The training uses your imported tenant data — not a demo portfolio — so the screens look like what your staff will see Monday morning. Every trainee leaves with a one-page workflow cheat sheet for their daily tasks.

Day 13–14: Cutover and go-live

Friday afternoon: your Yardi tenant goes read-only. Saturday: we run a final delta export and import (anything that moved Wednesday–Friday). Sunday: we promote your non-production tenant to production. Monday morning: your staff logs in to ExactEstate against the same email addresses they used for Yardi. No data is lost; your prior Yardi tenant stays read-only for 90 days so you can verify anything you need to verify.

What we migrate, in detail

This is what HUD's audit cycle requires you to keep, and it's all in scope:

• 50058 history, frozen. Every prior recertification, immutable, with the rule version it was calculated under (a HUD review three years from now needs to see the rule that was in effect on the recert date, not today's rule).
• EIV reconciliation history. Every income discrepancy, every resolution, every staff note. The 5-year lookback HUD requires for EIV reviews is preserved.
• Certifications. Annual, interim, initial. With effective dates, signature dates, and the staff member who certified.
• HAP register. Every HAP payment, every retroactive adjustment, every redetermination. Reconciled to your bank account history.
• 8823s. Every LIHTC non-compliance report, with status. (If you have a LIHTC portfolio, this is in scope; we don't charge extra.)
• Custom fields. One-to-one. If you've built workflow on a Yardi custom field, the field name and values come over.
• Attachments. PDFs, scanned letters, signed forms. We migrate the binary, not a link.

Side-by-side: Yardi PHA vs. ExactEstate

Five questions to ask your Yardi rep before signing

1. "What's the all-in per-unit cost, including every module we currently use?" Get the number on paper. Do not let "the modules are bundled in your tier" go unverified — ask for the line items.
2. "What is the HOTMA module add-on price for our portfolio size? Is it included in this renewal?" HOTMA compliance is Jan 1, 2027. If the answer is "we're working on it," that's a roadmap commitment, not a shipped product.
3. "What's the NSPIRE-V evidence packet workflow in your product today?" Listen for "we integrate with [third party]." That's a separate contract.
4. "What's the 5-year contract present value vs. month-to-month?" The 22% escalator compounds. Make the spreadsheet visible.
5. "If we don't renew, what's our data export format and turnaround time?" Yardi's standard export takes longer than the SOW promises. Get the SLA in writing.

Honest gaps in our pitch

We are not the only solution. Operators with very large enterprise portfolios (10,000+ units across multiple HUD programs and multiple state HFAs) sometimes need the depth of MRI's enterprise tier. Operators who are 80% conventional multifamily and 20% affordable sometimes prefer AppFolio's mobile-first UI even though its HOTMA readiness is partial. ExactEstate is built for PHA-heavy, LIHTC-heavy, compliance-first operators between 100 and 5,000 units. That's where the $3/unit/month math, the 14-day cutover, and the G2 #1 in Support track record all line up.

We also have honest gaps: we're a newer team than Yardi, our mobile experience is a responsive PWA rather than a dedicated native app (per our product philosophy), and our marketplace of third-party integrations is smaller than Yardi's Procure-to-Pay add-on ecosystem. If those matter to your portfolio, weigh them.

One CTA, no upsell

If you want the Yardi PHA migration timeline mapped against your renewal date, book a 20-minute call. We'll walk the export inventory, the cutover calendar, and the price delta against your renewal SOW. No PowerPoint.

You can also cross-reference our HOTMA Vendor Scorecard for the readiness ratings on all six major PMS vendors, and our EIV Reconciliation writeup for what the 15-day clock and 5-year lookback look like in the product.

Sources

• Yardi PHA renewal pricing: reflects increases reported by mid-market PHAs in 2025–2026 renewal negotiations. Email us at corrections@exactestate.com if your renewal looks different and we'll annotate the post.
• HOTMA implementation references HUD PIH Notice 2026-15. Check the HUD notice directly for exact compliance dates.
• NSPIRE-V Feb 2027 mandatory compliance: NAHRO February 2026 announcement; Federal Register 2025-19070.
• G2 #1 in Support: G2 quarterly rankings, Affordable Property Management category, 5 consecutive quarters through Q2 2026.

— The ExactEstate compliance team

From the HOTMA & PHA compliance cluster

• Switch from RealPage OneSite
• PHA software pricing benchmark
• TRACS submission errors
• HOTMA vendor scorecard