Increased efficiency not only reduces your costs (predominantly labour) but it gives you the ability to deliver a better Client Experience (CX) and this is what will drive your business growth. Here are some tips:
If you’re looking to increase the bottom line in your Property Management business (and who isn’t ?) there are a few key things you need to do. In today’s competitive business landscape, everyone is searching for ways to be more competitive, automate their operations and boost their bottom line, so how do you get ahead of the pack?
Increased efficiency not only reduces your costs (predominantly labour) but it gives you the ability to deliver a better Client Experience (CX) and this is what will drive your business growth. Here are some tips:
1. Invest in great automation.
If you’re not already using some form of automation in your business, now is the time to start. And don’t be fooled by marketing that proclaims automation when the workflows are still full of manual checks and actions.
Integrated and holistic automation will help you boost your top line by freeing up your time and resources so that you can focus on productive areas of your business, such as new business growth. It will also transform your bottom line as you’ll save up to 50% or more of your major cost, labour.
2. Repurpose your staff to high value activity.
Your customers place no value on the execution of routine tasks, they take this as a given. What they demand now is staff that proactively help them in managing their assets to maximize their returns. Your Property Managers are really Asset Managers.
Automation is what lets you free up time to focus on high value tasks that will help grow your business but you need to repurpose your staff into these areas.
3. Focus on growth.
If you want to bring in more revenue, you need to focus on growth.You should have integrated automation that drives your new business area. Marketing, showing, taking applications, vetting, approving and finally getting the tenant into the property and then managing the tenancy.
By getting onto a great automated platform, you can easily increase your top line and boost your bottom line. So, what are you waiting for? Get started today!
If you’d like to see more and maybe get a demo – simple click the book free demo button below.
We all know that happy customers are the key to business success. You get a lower churn rate, higher retention, and an increase in brand loyalty plus of course an increase in referrals – which are the cornerstone of growth.
In Property Management the key client has always been the Landlord, but more and more we’re seeing that tenants also have an important part to play in our business growth. Fee’s have traditionally been earned from the landlord but we’re now seeing fees earned from the tenancy itself, so the tenant naturally c=becomes more important.
We have a suite of ‘givens’ in our customer service these days – great landlord and tenant apps, automated processes, rewards programs, and a whole raft of tech enabled services that a customer can access to make their lives better.
24/7 on demand access
We have a suite of ‘givens’ in our customer service these days – great landlord and tenant apps, automated processes, rewards programs, and a whole raft of tech enabled services that a customer can access to make their lives better.
24/7 on demand access to information like ledgers and statements, the ability to report and manage maintenance online and in real time, the ability to manage payments in real time and online – these are all items that most leading offices now take for granted.
But this new tech enabled world isn’t just about providing direct features to your customers, even more importantly its about enabling your team to give a great personalised service that is really what will underpin all those innately human relationships that drive your business.
The old adage, Happy employees = happy customers has become a bit of a business bumper sticker.
Your team is the face of your business and you need that face to be happy and even more importantly to be skilled. Routine tasks are seen by your customers as having no added value, your team needs to provide value add professional advice and assistance.
Not to mention the real costs of team turnover. High turnover changes much of what the customer sees in the employees. They are newer, of course. They are less knowledgeable, both because of their shorter tenure and because companies that lose people at a fast clip are less likely to invest in training for them.
What’s the equation for this? maybe, “Happy employees = longer tenure = consistent training = employee expertise = happy customers.”.
Which could pretty much justify asserting, after all, that “Happy employees = happy customers.”
Whatever the formula, a happy customer base will definitely provide your business with a successful growth trajectory into the future.
If you’d like to see more and maybe get a demo – simple click the book free demo button below.
Your most significant cost is staff, and your ultimate challenge is finding and keeping great staff with high productivity.
There are two things we’d like to talk about here. Staff loss and staff performance.
With staff loss let’s look at mitigating the risk of what happens if staff leave you for a competitor, or worse still, to establish their own work from home business.
By using a highly automated platform you’re stopping the age-old bug bear of your staff having all the knowledge of the business and your clients – if they leave not only does your business immediately descend into chaos, but soon enough a large number of your valuable landlords inevitably end up at the business of your ex staff member.
With Our.Property that knowledge, history and process is contained within the system that YOU own and manage, if someone leaves you just reassign the property and owner, and all that knowledge is available to the new person immediately. All the tasks go on regardless as the system is fully automated. For your landlords a change of staff is virtually unnoticeable.
The Landlord is used to tasks just being done by your business
On the performance side the two main reasons why property managers perform poorly and eventually leave a job are:
The job becomes stressful when there are too many tasks to complete, too many things to remember, and too many things that need fixing because someone forgot to do something or did it incorrectly
The never-ending grind of doing low value repetitive tasks.
Great automation like Our.Property fixes all this.
Automation completes tasks on time and to specification, every single time, with no exceptions. And your property managers are now truly managers, not admin assistants – with automation the PM’s only need to manage the exceptions.
For several years now the industry has tried to solve this problem by offshoring these low value tasks to places like the Philippines where the labour rate is cheaper. It solves some of the immediate problem but it doesn’t’ fix the issues of consistency and accuracy – it also only goes part way to reducing your costs. If a job can be offshored it can be automated.
Once you have an automated platform like Our.Property your team can start to work at a higher level of the business concentrating on valuable client interactions and meaningful asset management.
Ask yourself why is it that commercial property Asset Managers are paid so highly, when a residential Property manager is paid so poorly? it’s simple, the value added by the employee to the process. Residential Property Managers have long been tied down executing very low value repetitive tasks, this is then reflected in their perceived value, and as a consequence their pay.
When you progress to an automated system your people are now moving to high value tasks that require judgement and skill to execute. Because of the automation you need less people and you can now start to reward those you have in a way that attracts quality talent and keeps them motivated.
Have a look at this video interview with Nikki Frazer talking about automation in OurProperty and how it helped them.
Now more than ever before your success is dictated by the level of client experience you offer.
We’ve always known that if we treat our clients well they will stay with us and recommend us, but in the new world of social media and instant communication the ramifications of this are far greater than they ever were. Its instant and its magnified 100 fold.
Your client is the Landlord, and they’re the key for your success, if you keep them happy then you’ll be able to generate significant revenues from their property for years to come.
There are a few key things you need to deliver;
Consistency
Transparency
Integrity
Quality high value personal interactions
The first 3 items are delivered by high quality automation, and the 4th is the end result of not tying up your people in doing repetitive tasks that could and should be done by automation.
Deep, well developed and well engineered workflows are the key to a great client experience.
Automation delivers a perfect job every time and on time. It is consistent and it is reliable. It doesn’t make ‘human’ errors.
If 70% of the daily tasks in your office can be done through automation (and they can) that leaves your highly paid property managers to do what they do best, interact with landlords and provide real value add services as a true Asset Manager – not an administrative assistant.
And there are a number of other benefits Our.Property provides to your clients that ensure they stay with you and pay you a market high fee base.
Having a great landlord portal and app for 24/7 access to all the property information including the full financials isn’t something that would be nice to have, it’s an absolute necessity. The landlord portal and app need to provide a working base for the landlord to manage his portfolio not just review it. The Our.Property platform provides the landlord not just with a site to review their property information but also with the tools to manage and grow their portfolio – and you stay at the centre of it all.
The Landlord has the option of immediate disbursement of rental income upon clearance and a host of options in regards how the financials are handled by you. Unlike other platforms that tend to be very rigid with limited customisation, with Our.Property your landlord has flexibility and feels in control.
You are also able to pass on lower maintenance costs through use of great AI and competitive job bidding. With Our.Property you have access to thousands of rated certified tradespeople.
And finally what landlord doesn’t want less arrears and faster payments. Arrears is seen by landlords as a failure of the property manager. With smart automated ‘pull’ payments and a sophisticated AI driven arrears management system you can all but eliminate your arrears and pay your Landlord in real time.
When you use Our.Property as your platform it is white labelled, so the client sees all these value add benefits as coming from you, not a 3rd party.
Have a look what successful general manager of RE/MAX Success Daniel Burrett has to say about the platform and how it benefited his business.
If you’d like to see more and maybe get a demo – simple click the book free demo button below.
The best time to change your Property Management platform was yesterday.
There is always something about to happen, the end of financial year, the Head of Department going on leave, someone has resigned, someone is pregnant… the list is endless. But one thing is certain, if you wait for the ‘perfect’ time to shift platforms then you’ll never make the change that you know you need to make.
Moving your property management platform is a big deal, no two ways about it, this is not just a matter of turning up on Monday morning, flicking a switch, and then continuing as normal.
But it’s manageable, and with the support of your onboarding team you’ll be surprised how quickly your current processes will be a distant memory.
If you make the change to the right platform then it’s a fundamental shift in the way your PM business will operate. You’re about to transition from a manually based process of executing tasks, over to an automated system where you only get involved in managing the exceptions.
And don’t be fooled by smart looking cloud-based products that are essentially just the old legacy products on the cloud. Deep automation driven by complex artificial intelligence is the key to operating an efficient business. If a product doesn’t have deep automation and a payments process that collects and disperses rental, then you need to keep looking. If a platform asks you to use a multitude of add on apps that are developed by 3rd parties, then you need to keep looking.
Let’s take the payment of rent and arrears management as an example. In your current process it’s the tenant who decides when and how much rent they pay. The tenant ‘pushes’ the money into your trust account, where you have to reconcile it and then disburse it. If the rent is not paid your arrears process will provide a list of outstanding amounts and times that you scan and make decisions as to what you do and when. When you do get the funds in trust you need to reconcile them and then disperse them.
When you go to an automated platform that includes payments you now ‘pull’ the exact amount of rent owed by the tenant on the day it’s due. If for any reason that payment declines, then the automated system uses sophisticated artificial intelligence to engage with the tenant using the medium and language that has proven to get the best results – you only get dragged in if a call is required or if you need to approve an action such as the sending of the pre populated notice etc.
These two ways of operating are poles apart – the old way is expensive with a relatively poor level of customer experience (CX). The new automated process not only saves vast amounts of time but also a huge number of now unnecessary 3rd party subscriptions that you’ve needed for a host of jobs that your existing system couldn’t t manage (ad uploads, viewings, applications, vetting, digital signing, inspections, maintenance, and the list goes on!) – all now unnecessary.
There are two costs to consider when moving platform. The cost of doing the move, and the cost of doing nothing. The first choice is cheap. On the Our.Property platform there are no subscription costs, so your only cost is the once off onboarding fee for managing to data shift and set up.
The second choice (doing nothing) will cost you plenty. According to one of our competitors the cost of not moving to an automated platform that manages payments is around $97,200 a year for every 500 properties in your portfolio.
As one of our clients recently said when asked the question of when the best time was to change, he simply said ‘rip the band aid off and do it now’.
You can watch his complete interview below
Daniel is the General Manager of an Agency with over 850 managements that has been very successful and that recently changed to Our.Property after many years on a legacy platform.
I sat watching a competitors webinar on ‘payments’ management the other day, and I honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The Property Manager was expected to physically scan the daily bank rec and look for unallocated payments, and then manually reconcile all of them – like seriously? this would be a painful task with 200 managements, but with 2,000 or more I doubt that it would even be possible.
But it got worse…
Once the payments had been collected they were just dumped into a trust account that not only did the Property Manager have to reconcile and manage, but they also had to manually manage and process all the disbursements – basically half the job or more had been left unfinished.
There was another recent competitor promo that proudly proclaimed that it paid the full funds (after your fees) into a Landlord ‘wallet’ – the landlord was then expected to manage the payments into their various accounts, and if funds were required for disbursements they had to be clawed back from the landlord, then paid out. It would be hard to make it more complex and difficult if you tried.
The landlord ‘wallet’ concept has been taken up by several platforms as a work around to try and circumvent the regulators. As an unlicensed participant using an unregulated account for settlements, they’re simply not legally able to ‘hold’ funds for disbursements. As a result, the only way to try and manage the process is to artificially create ‘wallets’ to deposit landlord funds into that allow funds to be clawed back when required.
But there are a few potential issues with ‘wallets’. Firstly, given that the landlord(s) have access to shift funds whenever desired from the wallet there is no certainty at all that funds will be there when required for disbursements. The next issue was flagged above in that the landlord has to go into the wallet and manually disburse funds as he needs to (a mortgage account or to multiple people possibly), then finally you have the question as to whether or not a ‘wallet’ even satisfies the existing regulations.
As an example, the Queensland legislation is very clear that anyone who collects rental for a 3rd party must be licensed, and the funds collected must then be deposited into a regulated trust account. Given all the new fintech enabled payment gateways need to settle funds before they can be disbursed, it’s hard to see how a platform can be compliant in QLD without settling via a regulated account. So there are questions of compliance as well as operational efficiency to be addressed.
But getting back to the main topic being reviewed here; automation, the intelligent use of artificial intelligence, and smart application of cutting edge fintech can all but eliminate routine tasks in the collections and disbursement of funds.
Collecting rent payments, managing arrears, processing disbursements and paying the landlord should be an effortless streamlined process that is safe and trouble free.
Automation not only takes away the need for highly skilled people to spend the majority of their day doing mundane jobs, but it also eliminates the possibility of human error, so you get a more efficient business and a much better customer experience.
As an added bonus you also greatly reduce the possibility of internal fraud. Provided that you’re settling through a regulated account you also provide your clients with the full benefit of the fidelity guarantee, and as an office you no longer have the underlying risk of this.
Every property management business should now be looking at how best to do away with the need for them to have internal trust account management and to execute all the manual process associated with that. If you don’t find a solution to this then you’ll soon find you’re not competitive in the market.
In the very near future the leading platforms like Our.Property will be able to pull rental payments and disburse them in real time and 24/7 – that is pretty exciting news for most landlords and their property managers. You take back full control and you’re able to transact (collect and disperse) in real time every minute of every day.
Most platforms out there today have a simple rent collection process (that is done by a 3rd party) bolted on to their cloud-based management product that has very shallow workflows. Some of these platforms then use landlord wallets that allows them to also do a version of disbursements.
For real automation you need a fully integrated platform that has deep workflows starting with the execution of the Management Agreement and flowing through the entire onboarding process from advertising, enquiry, viewings, tenant application and vetting, through to lease preparation, signing and filing.
From here you need an automated process to collect and disperse the rent, manage arrears, handle maintenance, inspections, and finally the full exit process.
All these steps should require the management of the flagged exceptions only – high quality management and client relationship building rather than task-based grunt work that a machine can be efficiently doing.
Here’s a list of 5 questions we think you should ask before you decide what platform is best for you.
Does the platform I’m looking at;
Provide real automation? (or does it expect me to manually check everything).
Integrate fully with my arrears, maintenance, entry and exit processes.
Collect and disperse all funds?
Settle into a regulated trust account?
Give my landlords the protection of the Fidelity Fund?
A ‘no’ to any of these questions should probably be a deal breaker for you.
If you’re in the property management industry you’ve probably just taken it for granted that the main process you manage is to collect rental from tenants, deposit it in a trust account, and then distribute it to the landlords.
If you’re in the property management industry you’ve probably just taken it for granted that the main process you manage is to collect rental from tenants, deposit it in a trust account, and then distribute it to the landlords.
This was an expensive process to manage and came with a high degree of risk for the licensed business owner. If you had 500 properties under management, you probably employed around 5 or 6 people who would all have some sort of access to your trust account.
And with that many people having access to a large amount of funds on deposit things have a habit of occasionally going pear shaped.
As an example, for the above 500 properties the agency would have historically held over $1 million in bonds alone, that’s money that will not missed for a year or so and could easily be misappropriated by a smart but dishonest employee.
The government came to understand this risk many years ago and as a result enacted legislation and set up state regulatory bodies to oversee the process.
But here’s the rub for the business owner. The regulator is set up to protect the consumer, not you. All the legislation and regulatory protection is for the benefit of the consumer, and at your risk.
We often hear Agents say “I’m protected by the Fidelity Fund” – if only this was true. The Fidelity Fund in each state is underwritten via interest on the trust deposits but it is only available to cover consumer claims. If a consumer makes a claim that is paid by the fund the regulator will then reclaim this amount from the licensee of the business that was managing the deficient trust account.
So the consumer gets their money returned, but it’s the licensee that eventually has to make the reimbursement. If your employee misappropriates money from your trust you essentially have to reimburse the trust account from your own pocket.
This is a pretty big risk to bear if you have millions of dollars circulating in your trust account. You can of course insure against some of this, but many aspects aren’t covered, and coverage is expensive and often tricky to claim.
Well, as Bob Dylan once said, the times they are a changing….
With revolutionary changes in banking process, and the intersection of the proptech and fintech worlds, we now have options that simply didn’t exist a few years ago.
In 2022 a property management business can operate without managing an in office trust account. You can retain complete control over the funds, both collection and disbursement – but you never have to take physical possession of those funds, so you don’t need a trust account and you avoid all the risk that comes with taking possession of the funds.
If you use our.property as your platform you also have a significant benefit that none of the other available options can offer you – the continued protection of your clients funds by the Fidelity Fund in each state.
Our.Property is the only payments platform that is licensed in each state of Australia to collect and disperse rental, and all funds are settled via a regulated trust account meaning the funds in that account are protected by each states Fidelity Fund – and instead of you, OurProperty Payments holds the risk of that consumer protection.
The major risk of employee misappropriation is removed as staff can no longer manipulate the process. Items such as landlord bank account changes require double authentication and there are automated warnings that go to all parties whenever something like an account change is made. Transparency and automated processes give you and your clients protection.
What other risks can you say goodbye to with an automated payments process?
One of the main risks in property management (and property investment) is getting the rent paid in full and on time.
Traditionally rent is paid by a ‘push’ payment – this means that the tenant ‘pushes’ the payment to the Agent. In the lease it might state that the rent is $3,000 a month and due on the 1st of the month, but every month your tenant decides when they are actually going to pay and how much they will pay, they might be away on a holiday so don’t get onto the payment till the 5th, or they could be a bit short and decide they’ll only pay half ($1,500) now and the balance next week. As the agent you have no control over this, and for the owner you never really know what you will get, or when – this can cause a lot of friction if the landlord relies on these funds to pay the mortgage.
When you switch to our.property you change this whole dynamic, the rent is now ‘pulled’ by you rather than being ‘pushed’ by the tenant.
The primary methods are to be pulled from an account via a Direct Debit or the soon to be active ‘Pay to’ channel of the NPP (New Payment Platform), or to be pulled via a card payment (much as you now do with Uber etc).
You now control when the payment is made and how much it is – all done in accordance with the property lease that the landlord and tenant have already agreed to.
And the best part is that your tenants are already completely used to this style of process (every app like Uber uses it) and the tenant experience is enhanced, they now have a complete ‘set and forget’ option and they also have unlimited flexibility with the option of registering multiple accounts and cards and changing the method used whenever they would like to.
By then integrating the payments process back to an automated arrears process you can immediately manage the arears in a way that is guaranteed to get the best results.
Targeted communications to the tenant using proven artificial intelligence to understand the most appropriate communication channels, the best frequency, and the right messaging for a particular tenant, and then a simple in app click through to instigate the payment.
A great automated system also has multiple payment re tries and well as sophisticated processes like open banking where the system can look into the tenants account prior to the payment processing to understand if the funds are there or not. The advantage of this is that you can start an arrears process immediately rather than waiting 3 days for a declined payment, you also save the tenant $20 or more in overdraw fees which gives you a greater chance of clearing your payment on the next day.
So in a nutshell an automated 3rd party payments system gives a property management agency some huge advantages, but you need to look at what system you’re adopting and understand if you’re getting all the protections you need – the main thing to look for is does the platform settles funds through a regulated trust account (or are they just using a normal bank account that is owned and operated by a processor that they utilise – ie a 4th string party).
Increase your rewards and reduce your risks.
Ay our.property we have a team of client relationship managers than can talk you though the processes and you can also see a number of client testimonials both written and in video on our web site. We’re very proud to say that a number of Australia’s leading property management companies are already on platform with portfolio sizes of up to 7,000+ properties.
With this 3rd covid variant of Omicron we’ve come to realise that things won’t be going back to the way they were, there is a whole new ‘normal’ that we all need to adjust to.
For a property manager, routine inspections have always been a slightly painful part of their lives.
Regular inspections are critical to the effective management of a property, and for a lot of landlords the inspection reports form the basis of how they view the cost effectiveness and ‘value‘ that they believe they’re getting from their property manager. So the inspection reports have become critical to the customer experience that the property manager wants to deliver.
But in 2022 our phones are continually flashing with this message from our tenants “Sorry but I’ve been asked to isolate, and I need to cancel tomorrow’s inspection”
So that nicely scheduled dozen inspections you had for tomorrow, that all flowed beautifully from one to the other, is now in chaos; half the inspections have cancelled, you’re now driving backwards and forwards all day, and you have gapping holes in your previously very well-planned day. Most importantly half your landlords now believe that they’re not getting value from their investment in your services.
You also have no idea of what condition a property is in, and if it’s a new tenant then the delay could cause havoc if things are uncovered later that show significant damage in this period – you might even be liable under the terns of your agreement for not getting the inspection done on time.
So, we know what the problem is, but how do we resolve it? the tenant has every right to keep people out of their home at this time, and you have an obligation to keep your staff safe, plus the law mandates the isolation.
But on the flip side you have a contractual obligation to professionally manage the property and you may also have a fixed number of inspections that your contractually obliged to perform.
The simple answer is you need to be able to conduct the inspection remotely, ie you or the landlord do not go to the property but you do get a proper inspection done.
The emphasis above was on the words ‘proper inspection’. There are several apps in the market but in the main they offer shallow solutions, generally it’s just a cursory walk through that is controlled by the tenant.
Well, there is at least one platform that delivers everything a Property Manager needs – control of the inspection and even the ability to invite the landlord along remotely as well.
Even if the tenant doesn’t have the OurTenant app on their device the Property Manager can still invite them into the inspection on their phone and then use that phone to conduct the remote inspection.
Click to play the quick how-to video below
You can select more than 1 tenant to attend and you can also invite and log in multiple landlords.
When everyone is connected into the remote inspection you’ll be able to hear each other via the phones speakers, and as the Property Manager you’ll be able to see the images that the tenants camera is viewing. You can direct the tenant as to where you want the camera looking and you take can image grabs at any time that you choose.
At all times the Property Manager controls the inspection, unlike many of the apps on the market that simply ask the tenant to take a number of images and make comments – obviously if you take this route, you only ever see what the tenant wants you to see, so in no way is this a viable inspection solution.
As you direct the tenant from room to room you can review previous inspection comments and history which makes it a lot easier to address areas of concern and makes sure that you don’t miss any important details.
Summing up there are 10 important features that the Our.Property remote inspection tool delivers to you that most other ‘solutions’ don’t;
You get inspection reminders: The PMInspect app reminds Property Managers about the inspection due dates and gives you a schedule and run for the day.
Automated Scheduling: Property Managers and tenants can confirm their availability for the virtual inspection via their apps which is then followed by confirmation emails which both the parties can save to their calendar.
You can invite owners to the remote walkthroughs: Property owners can co-inspect the property live with property manager while maintaining privacy.
Send Reminders: Property managers can send an email and an SMS to the tenants and the owner reminding them about the remote inspection scheduled.
Maintain control: Unlike other inspection tools, OurProperty’s remote Inspection gives property managers the control to take pictures and video which is them embedded into the inspection reports automatically.
Send detailed inspection reports: PMs can add the photos and notes taken into the inspection report and they are automatically distributed when the Property Manager has approved them after the remote walkthroughs.
Automate communications to save time: Property Managers can use the numerous pre-written message templates to share their comments saving a huge amount of time.
Create room-specific reports: Each room cues the PM to ask the tenant to point the camera to a specific part of the room for a more nuanced inspection.
Cutdown on backlogs: This highly automated system helps the PM send the detailed inspection report soon after the live inspection saving them a great deal of time that is normally spent in office tidying up the data.
Save time, money and your sanity; the automation embedded in the workflows will save you countless hours and reduce the stress and hassle usually associated with routine inspections.
On a more industry wide and general note we’re now seeing that the majority of property management businesses look at remote inspections as the future for ALL routine inspections.
Rather than sending people out into the field where half their time is spent driving between properties, they can now schedule the inspections back to back and do them from the office. If you get a late cancellation or problem, no problem, you can just get on with your other activity.
Remote inspections definitely seem the way of the future for the industry and while you will always want your entries and exits to be done on site there is absolutely no reason why all routines can’t be managed remotely.
For further details of the Our.Property solution there is a live webinar on Friday the 21st January 2022 at 10am AEST that will be delving onto the details and if your reading this after that date then please go to this link for a video of the event.
If you’d like a full demo of the Our.Property platform please book a personalised demo below.
