How to Maintain Your Properties During This Time of Social Distancing?

Regardless of COVID-19 social distancing continues to affect life as we know it in the United States,several businesses stepped back, restaurants closed their doors and big events were postponed. With all these problems, there’s one thing that hasn’t stopped for property managers and community association managers, and that’s maintenance requests, repairs, and upkeep.

It’s hard to know what to do in times like these — and you’re not alone — many property managers ask the same questions:

How can I go on with my maintenance activities if I can not go on site?
How can I provide the quality of service my clients deserve when they don’t want a repair technician to visit their home?
How can I guarantee the health of my technicians and my residents while still doing the work?
How will I treat requests for preservation of common areas within my community associations?

Those are tough questions and while we can not answer all of them, at this point we can give you a few easy ways to fix maintenance requests. Here are 5 things property and neighborhood administrators should do right now to improve their social distance maintenance operations:

1.Schedule Non-Urgent Repairs :

One thing you can do to that person-to-person contact with your tenants and staff instantly is to delay non-emergency repairs. Begin by communicating this via email or text message to your people, letting them know it’s for their protection and that of your employees. Be empathetic about their problem and make sure that at a later date you can follow up on their appeal.

Through deferring these types of demands, your maintenance technicians will concentrate their resources on critical repairs— such as roof leaks, plumbing failures, and water main breaks— so that your property continues running smoothly.

When there is an urgent repair that must be done on the house, whether it is indoors or outdoors, make sure that your staff is fitted with protective equipment such as latex Gloves, face masks, and sanitation materials. Additionally, confirm with your residents that your team meets approved CDC protocols and offer to join their unit if they’re on a walk to reduce interaction further.

2.Communications Optimization:

With many of the team members operating remotely and fewer on-site staff, it can be difficult to ensure that you interact efficiently when it comes to maintenance requests and repairs. Fortunately there are mobile devices to help you streamline communications.

3.Keep common places clean:

Clean Another way to keep your property and neighborhoods secure while preventing COVID-19 from spreading is to clean your common areas regularly. Currently, the CDC recommends that regularly accessed surfaces such as door handles, elevator keys, shared bathrooms and regular railings be disinfected. Make sure the cleaning staff do have protective equipment while operating.

4.Consult with vendors:

In addition to cleanliness, maintaining good contact with your vendors and ensuring that they obey the same protocols is very critical. Asking about their COVID-19 management plan is a good idea because you know that you’re on the same page. Send daily email notifications to vendors with the guidelines of your communities to communicate and bring with residents and perform maintenance duties. Additionally, in case an employee calls in sick, create a contingency staffing plan.

5.Perform Digital Inspections:

Some property managers and community administrators may have scheduled annual routine inspections in the coming weeks. Consider postponing these during social distancing, or see whether residents are open to doing a virtual inspection using their devices. Just ask them to take pictures of each room, and then send them to your team by email or text.

Consider waiving late penalties for neighborhood groups where breaches are minuscule.

Social distancing poses problems for property and neighborhood association administrators but you can ensure consistency with your maintenance activities by taking the appropriate steps and using the required mobile devices. Begin by interacting proactively with your employees, vendors, and residents about how you will manage inquiries, preserve cleanliness, communicate with others, and make urgent repairs. When you have a strong business plan in place, you will continue to respond with agility and trust.

Mpower being Property Management Software is useful for managing multiple properties with all the essential features that your business needs. Whether you are a landlord managing a handful of properties or a property manager with hundreds of properties…

March 27, 2020 0

What does Cloud-Based Property Management Software do?

Are you still using spreadsheets to manage your properties?

Is it slowing down your property management software?

Are your servers crashing time and time again? If yes, then it is an indication that you need to upgrade it to cloud-based property management software.

Here are some benefits why you need cloud-based property management software:

1. Cloud property management software allows you to work from anywhere

You’re constantly on the go as a property manager. From customer meetings to inspections to maintenance organizations, your software needs to be accessible from anywhere to reduce downtime and help you find the information you need when you want it.

With cloud property management software, your data is stored virtually in a secure network of servers which can be accessed as long as you have an internet connection. This allows you to log in from anywhere in the world, at any time. You are no longer limited to a single computer, database, location or time zone.

Improved transparency also means easier collaboration. Using the mobile app of the company, you could be on-site performing an inspection and your team member could be in the office writing the inspection report for the same property. This not only enhances productivity, but it also keeps everyone in the loop.

2. You can automate repetitive tasks with Cloud-based management software

If there are many tasks that are repetitive and time-consuming then you can automate them with the help of cloud-based property management software. It includes:

Reconciliation Traditionally, you’d have to download a file from your bank to update your accounts and type each payment manually into your code or table. This may take hours each week, depending on how often you do this and how many properties you control.

Cloud property management software automates many processes for you. Just import your bank file and it will allocate it to different parts of your portfolio automatically. All you have to do is approve with a single click the matched transactions or change the allocation as appropriate.

In fact, if your cloud property management system has bank feeds, you can instantly import your trust account transactions directly from your bank overnight, saving you even more time!

Data backups and software updates If you are using server-based property management software, it is likely that you will spend a few hours each month to back up your data and update your software. This is all done automatically with cloud property management software. So you can say goodbye to downtime and IT expenses related to data recovery and technology upgrades. It’s hours of lost productivity that you get back every month!

Processing and paying bills Some cloud property management software systems make it a breeze to process and pay bills.

Planning inspections When planning your inspection day, you often need to manually determine which properties are due for inspection and then calculate the distance and travel time between properties to determine the most efficient route. You must then manually identify the relevant tenants and prepare notices for inspection. Many cloud software management systems will automate this process to save you time.

Communications By automating your communications, you can save time with cloud property management software. In order to ensure reliability and product continuity, you can set up message templates and triggers based on specific behavior and tasks. For example, customized messages are automatically generated with attached statements once you have disbursed your owners and suppliers. Until sending them off, you can set these to fire automatically or have them ready for preview in your outbox.

3. Some cloud property management software helps you stay compliant

As a property manager, monitoring is tricky. There are many moving parts–you have to comply with regulations, keep track of monitoring activities for your owners, and ensure that any financial operation and contact for audit purposes is tracked and documented.

If you use server-based property management software or spreadsheets, enforcement activities are likely to be manually monitored and stored in large volumes of data each month. This often results in missed assignments or small data entry mistakes that escalate into larger ones that take plenty of time and money to rectify the coming audit time.

4. You can reduce add-ons with cloud property management software

If you use server-based property management software, you are likely to use a number of add-on programs to inspect, track maintenance, send messages, and manage listings. These are multiple subscriptions that you pay for each month, in addition to what you already pay for your server-based property management software.

The team will recall multiple logins, not to mention, and continuously move from program to program to perform regular property management tasks. Meanwhile, to prevent unauthorized access to your portfolio, you need to keep track of various subscription billing cycles and ensure that your team follows best security practices.

You will through add-ons with everything you need to handle your assets using cloud property management technology. Look for a system with comprehensive trust accounting, integrated inspections, and maintenance, inbound and outbound messages, multiple security layers and flexibility to integrate with other programs. That way, every month you can save hundreds (or thousands) of dollars while increasing your efficiency.

5. You can streamline your communications with cloud property management software

Communication is one of the property management’s cornerstones. You track leads every day, coordinate repairs, chase rent arrears, etc., etc. Sometimes it feels like an endless cycle of calls, SMS, letters, and emails that come from a variety of different directions. In addition, your team members have internal noise… that’s where cloud property management software comes in! Through putting together most of these platforms into one forum, it can help you streamline your communications. Send and receive custom emails and SMS directly back to your portfolio, trigger automated notifications based on specific tasks and behavior.

6. Cloud property management software can help you scale your business

If you use server-based software, your growth is often limited as your space is limited. You need to maintain and upgrade your servers to scale up your business, which is expensive and inefficient as your entire team needs to log out of the system.

In comparison, storage is digital and uncapped with cloud property management technology. This allows you to upgrade or downgrade your storage or subscription as required. It’s much more cost-effective because you just pay for what you need.

Furthermore, there is a lot of automation in cloud property management technology that can simplify your workload and improve your performance. Alternatively, you should focus on maintaining friendships and growing your rent roll.

All in all… Here are six reasons why you need cloud property management software: 1. It allows you to work from anywhere 2. You can automate repetitive tasks 3. It helps you stay compliant 4. You can reduce add-ons 5. You can streamline your communications 6. It helps you scale your business

November 29, 2019 0

Micro Apartments-Redefine Real Estate Trends

The studio apartment is an international concept, but it is currently gaining momentum in India due to the young professionals primarily in the IT and BPO sector. Spacious and high-end apartments being beyond the budgetary limits of the salaried class in major cities of India have a limited clientele. The concept of studio apartments in major Indian cities gained in prominence due to their lower price as well as the space constraints in these cities.

Let’s Understand Studio Apartment-

It is a small apartment that combines a living room, bedroom and dining room into a single large room. A kitchenette may either be included within this room or in a small separate room, with a small bathroom as well. Such an apartment is also known as an ‘efficiency apartment’ or ‘bachelor apartment’. They are generally occupied by one or more bachelors or a small family. The size of such apartments generally range from about 400 sq.ft-600 sq.ft. The easy connectivity to the office is the well-suited reason for the growth of studio apartments.

There is a major difference between studio apartments and 1 bhk flats although there has been a spurt in demand for affordable living spaces, especially in the metros, and this has led to the commonly accepted culture of the studio apartments’ concept. Although this minimal living style has been popular in the West, it’s fast catching up in India now.
Globally, there is an increasing demand for micro-living. A micro-home or a micro-apartment is a self-contained, single-bedroom unit, mostly meant for single occupancy. Such micro-apartments are mostly in trend in Metro catchments and are gauged anywhere between 50 and 350 sq. ft. These small -size posh apartments are well entrenched across European and Asian countries, where students and young professionals explore economical shelter close to their university or workplace as well in closeness to the entertainment hubs in the city.

Micro-Apartments An Economical Residential Option-

As a concept, micro-apartments in India are set to redefine studio and one-bedroom units. For years, studio apartments and one-bedroom units have been an economical residential option for singles and young couples who are willing to compromise on space to own a house in a convenient location, rather than pay high rentals or take out huge loans to afford bigger houses. However, micro-homes are not just about affordability. What makes studio apartment different is their design and the fact that they are furnished with all the modern comforts and amenities and are at a prime location. These units, designed to offer privacy with a separate bedroom and kitchen, make it popular with small families too.

Growth Of Micro Apartments-

Mumbai has been the front runner when it comes to the concept of micro-apartments and has seen offerings as small as 189 sq ft., going up to 320 sq ft. Amidst soaring realty prices in the space-constrained metro, these micro-units give young working professionals their best shot at owning an apartment in a central locality, without compromising on their lifestyle.
The micro-housing market is also seeing a spurt in demand in cities such as Bengaluru, Gurugram and Noida that has a large migrant population of working professionals with an annual income of more than Rs 8 lakh. mainly among the younger generation, which prioritizes location and lifestyle over space, micro-homes have huge potential in India, given the fact the country is the abode of around 440 millennial.

Millennial Approach Towards Micro Apartments-

The millennial population is not just expanding in size but is also multiplying its economic footprint. Research has also indicated that around one out of every 10 millennial in India plans to purchase a home before a car. Additionally, millennials prefer to spend on rent rather than buying a house in the coming years because they spend most of their time out of the house, working or attending classes. Hence they opt for Studio apartments. These apartments are smaller in size, so cleaning and maintaining the house is easier. These apartments provide privacy. Also the cost of designing and decorating these apartments is lower.

Approach Of Real Estate Developers-

Many Grade-A developers require property management software, to manage such multiple projects as they are coming up with housing concepts that are custom-made for Indian millennials, specifically singles, young couples, and students. These offer all the modern amenities and facilities that large-scale luxury residential projects offer, including a clubhouse, community sports facilities, 24/7 security systems. Many of them also have value-added services such as concierge and room services that can be availed on payment. Having a small space it makes the millennials live with less and keep the things which is essential this kind of space management is other wise a goal for many to achieve.

Apart from end-users, micro-apartments are also attracting the investor community in big numbers. Globally, data has suggested that rental returns in micro-units are generally higher than regular apartments. With the exceeding growth, the developers look for property management solutions for managing such varied properties.

So one such solution available is Mpower which is a Best Cloud-Based Property management software to manage multiple properties The higher returns stem from robust demand and better utilization of the available resources. Likewise, the rates of appreciation are also expected to outperform larger-sized units. As it is a light investment, the entry barriers are limited and it can also be liquidated easily.

August 22, 2019 0

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