Be More Competitive: Know These Property Management Trends

Aside from buying the deal right, implementing the right property management on the deal is absolutely crucial to the success of the property. Finding creative ways to maximize operational performance, both in driving revenue and controlling expenses is always a challenge, but with proper planning and execution, you can take advantage of trends in property management and stand out from others.

So, here are five key property management trends and considerations to keep an eye out for:

1) Staff Retention Is Hard
Whenever there is a good economy, retaining good people always becomes a problem. If you have property management in your deals or manage your own team, retaining your in-house and on-site talent continues to be an operational challenge for many managers and owners.

To hang on to good people, you need to become an expert at old-fashioned relationship building, recognition, and helping them meet their personal career goals. If they are performing and the business is doing well, you can also reward them financially. As long as the employee is an active part of the team and engaged with the business, they will stick around.

2) Everybody is Going Digital
Over the past 5 years, there has been a massive wave of people that use mobile phones instead of their PCs to access and consume information from the Internet. Social media has become the predominant application where people are spending their time. The days of posting an ad on Craigslist and getting flooded with emails are over. Today, prospective tenants go to places like Facebook Marketplace, watch a video, and send an instant message in response to a post.

Integrate these technologies with your property management system and you will be able to manage showings more efficiently and accelerate the process of onboarding tenants.

3) Demographics are Changing
The United States has more immigrants than any other country in the world. We are built on immigration. In a research report by the Pew Research Center, they estimate that by 2065, Asians will make up some 38% of all immigrants and Hispanics will make up 31%. In many large markets - especially in the sunbelt states - these immigrant populations gravitate toward multifamily rentals. What’s more, the most important marketing source is word-of-mouth through their community.

So, depending on where your properties are, you may need to build a multilingual customer service team to handle the needs of this diverse and growing tenant base.

4) Tenant Amenities are Rightsizing
As time passes, people are opting to work from home and employers are looking to use their office space in other ways or just getting smaller spaces altogether. For property managers of some property classes, this means creating workspaces for these tenants that allow for meeting rooms as well as incorporating high-speed internet and offering work areas with printing and copying. The days of amenities such as tennis courts are gone.

If you have areas in your properties that are not much used anymore, consider repurposing those expense dollars for a community garden or building out an outdoor entertainment center.

5) Old Fashioned Customer Service is Still a Must-Have
There is no substitute for good customer service. I’m not talking about putting a doorman at your Class C property. Instead, I’m referring to providing the basics for comfortable living; things such as friendly staff, a clean property that tenants can be proud of, responsive maintenance teams, and modern touches like online account handling and payment acceptance.

Anyway, these trends present opportunities for property managers and us as real estate entrepreneurs to up our game and stand out from competitive properties.

Are you seeing any trends I didn't mention? Please leave them in the comments. We would love to hear from you.

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