We have already talked about some of the trending technologies in the blog post regarding cell phones and all the cool apps available to track and manage properties. I want to push the discussion a little bit further in this section to discuss some of the online technologies available to property managers.
There is a host of property management software that could be used on the Internet to set up accounts, track maintenance requests, store tenant profiles, and act as a repository for any type of notice, lease, rental agreement, or any other type of documentation going back and forth between the property manager, the tenant, and the owner. I have to admit it; I’m a little bit of a geek on this stuff and find it kind of fun to learn new things.
One of my favorite applications is Dropbox. I use Dropbox to store thousands of photos for rental properties and videos that we put together to use for marketing our rentals and services. We also use Dropbox for cloud storage for many of the forms, leases, and templates we need to use in our day-to-day operations. It is very handy to go into Dropbox duplicate a form and go right to work using it as a checklist for the day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month routines involved with our property management operations. No paper to log in later, one step and its done.
I also absolutely love the Google suite of applications. For the past few years we have been using Google Drive and I honestly can’t imagine how I did this business before without it. There used to be a lot of taking notes on site, riving back to the office at the end of the day, then data entry before clocking off for the evening. Now, we’re able to do real-time maintenance calls and tracking of our contractors and vendors on the fly. We have also set up custom worksheets, timesheets and mileage tracking to better measure which activities we are doing, when, how much time they take, and how we could do better with every job.
One of our best innovations are spreadsheets to track rent rolls and give access to the landlords and property owners. Using Google Calendar, we are able to set up notifications that will ping a landlord’s cell phone as soon as a rent deposit is made. That is an absolutely fantastic feature to share with clients. All of our landlords love that one.
Finally, there are professional property management software packages like Appfolio, Buildium, and Yardi that are scalable solutions to take any landlord to the next level. We are always looking for new tools and ways to implement them to run our business more efficiently. It is also important to mention here that the answer does not mean you have to drop your current system and start all over with something new. There are apps that you may be currently using such as Outlook, Excel, and Word that have untapped features you may not have utilized as of yet. Always a good idea to dig a little deeper into your current toolbox and see if there are features in there you have never found before.
We are always looking for a better way to do our job, then, pass along the savings and efficiency to our landlords, and the benefits of being organized to our tenants, for complete customer satisfaction.
Do you have any ideas on this topic you could share to help our online community?
Please chime in to share a comment or review.
Warmest regards,
Brian Lucier
Belaire Property Management
Regional Property Manager
(978) 448-0669
info@belaire.co
www.belaire.co
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