Put the U in Technology
Three Basics for Apartment Owners
If you don’t read past the next sentence, you’ll know all you need to know for today’s lesson. ‘You must invest in technology’. Ah … still reading! That must mean you 1) Understand technology can mean many things 2) Know your project has not properly advanced from coin-operated laundry machines and a drop-box (not DropBox) and 3) You quite possibly aren’t sure what to do about it all.
Landlord’s must invest in technology in 3 essential ways. Here, we at Windsor Turner are going to give you one tip for each of those ways. So first, what are those three ways you need to start in this process? You need to consider your property, your residents (and future residents), and your operations management. Improved technology systems will deliver meaningful impacts (read increased revenue, decreased expenses) in a multitude of ways.
To avoid being overwhelmed, let’s start with the following straight-forward actions:
1) Technology for your property. This is going to be much easier for the new project, and must become a part of your capital improvement plans for an existing property. Your residents now have everything delivered. If you are still using the leasing office’s coat closet to store resident packages … well … your leasing agent is spending a lot of time buried under a pile of boxes, rather than leasing apartments. You must create an efficient space for resident deliveries, and a method for managing them. You can create a system yourself, or consider a service such as Parcel Pending. The deliveries are going to increase, not decrease … as evidence … we recently had a mattress arrive at a leasing office. So acknowledge it, and make this resident amenity a priority.
2) Your Residents. Your residents are Zelle’ing their manicurist, Venmo’ing their dinner mates, and EFT’ing their gym payments. Why would they possibly be writing you a rent check? We can all admit it - it feels good to have money in our hands - but first, that’s not how the world operated Pre-Covid 19, and when rental offices had to shut down due to the pandemic - the winners were those landlords who had a strong online payment system already in place. Online payments, using something like AppFolio is going to make your residents happier. And while you won’t have the pleasure of stamping the back of the check, the money getting into your account sooner, will make up for it.
3) Operations Management. Raise your hand if you’re writing out paper Purchase Orders. On paper. With a pen. And raise your hand if at the end of the day you are wondering if your maintenance tech finished installing the new dishwasher over in 32-B. Well, there’s an app for that. Change is hard. For everyone. But once implemented and a habit, using technology can make owners and staffers more accountable to each other. The ability to sign and take pictures of work done will ease an owner’s mind, while allowing your staff to digitally check off their to-do list.
The possibilities are endless, but fear not the unknown. Start with a few things. Make a plan. And most importantly, don’t be afraid to bring in the experts. Maybe they’ll need a new apartment. You can lease them one using your new online leasing app!
Cheers.
WT