The real estate industry has been displaying steady growth and evolution. Today, managing residential, commercial, or industrial properties involves more than providing space. Tenants are looking for ambiance, comfort, functionality, amenities, and potential for social growth and networking from properties. As such, the work of property managers has increased significantly while their time and energy have remained constant. There’s a need to incorporate property management automation to counter this emerging problem. Property management automation is the use of a software application to plan, organize and schedule the operations and transactions involved in offering accommodation. So how does this software benefit property management?
8 Advantages Of Property Management Automation
Property management software developers such as Foliolens are responding to the needs of the real estate industry by offering reliable software to aid with the automation process. Here’s why you should consider automating your property management process:
It Helps With Online Rent Collection
Property management automation enables online collection of rent. With this software, you don’t have to have any physical interaction with existing tenants of your property. Online payments mean that you may not necessarily need an accountant, therefore, reducing the cost of salaries. Additionally, with online payments, human errors in transactions are reduced. As such, you can account for every coin coming into our business. Besides that, automation can help you create notifications to remind your tenants about rent before the due date. If you use this feature, you’ll be required to provide an option for either paying immediately or when the date arrives. The notification feature will also help in sending receipts as proof of payment. Generally, the entire transaction process will be digitized, which allows you to record receipts for future reference.
It Helps To Enhance Communication
There are many parties involved in the successful running and overseeing of property. They include owners, landlords, contractors, tenants, and even accountants. All these people must be able to communicate effortlessly and in real-time. For example, in case of any maintenance issues, a client should be able to access the owner or landlord to request urgent fixing at any time of the day. One of the advantages of property management automation is that it helps build seamless communication. Therefore, through the software, the lessee can log into their profile and update any maintenance issues at any time of the day. On the other end, the landlord can view the request and act on it. The software also keeps track of the maintenance cost of different spaces, which will come in handy while preparing the inventory for running the accommodation business.
Automation Helps With Bookings
Unlike previously, where occupants of a property had to come into the office to book a room physically, today, they can reserve rooms through their smartphones. Through online booking, a potential client can view their desired space online and decide to book it. In case of any changes, they can equally cancel the booking following the specific owner’s requirement. The ease of booking and canceling reduces the time otherwise used to track the property’s status manually. It also helps maintain order where reserved properties are no longer available for booking and can’t be assigned to two occupants. Online booking is especially profitable for the hospitality and Airbnb industry. For the latter, the property owner doesn’t necessarily need a physical office as long as they have an online presence. It helps the owner save on rent and other associated costs of a physical location.
It Helps to Automate Property Renewals
Another advantage of property management automation is that it helps with renewals. Before introducing the technology, tenants had to visit the landlord’s office to renew their lease. However, today, the software allows you to renew your lease online. The automated software uses information submitted on the initial day of renting to generate a form to fill so that you can process renewals. It then sends the form and an email to notify the tenants of the renewal date. If the clients approve renewals, they can sign the form and email the digital documents back to the landlord. The entire process is automated, saving time and resources like paper and fuel to access the offices.
Property Management Automation is Largely Paperless
The concept of automation is largely based on creating a digitalized system. As you have seen through the advantages already discussed above, the automated property management process involves a lot of digital documents. These documents are favorable in the running of any successful business. First, digitalization saves on the cost of papers and filling resources. It also helps to reduce the workforce that would be required to store and manage the documents. Digital documents also allow the property owner to work from anywhere as long as they have access to real-time information. In return, arising issues are handled in a reasonable time, creating reliable services.
It Has Boosted Security
As mentioned above, property management involves a lot of documentation, like a lease agreement. These documents are critical, and they should be protected from falling into the wrong hands. With the property management system, you don’t have to worry about the security of your occupant’s documents. The software is built to offer robust protection through data encryption, enabling you and your client to transact with utmost transparency.
Automation Has Contributed to Successful Marketing
Marketing is arguably one of the greatest advantages of property management automation. If nobody knows about your business, the above-listed advantages would be meaningless. Through the automated software, you can now market your property to a wider audience both locally and globally. An example of automated marketing is the use of websites. Through a website, landlords can list their available vacancies and update the list with changes. It’s recommended that you use this space to show off your best properties together with their amenities and features. To increase the chance of new bookings, consider adding a customer review section. It will help you keep track of your performance, and if the reviews are good, you can acquire referral customers.
Automation Helps In Financial Management
All information and documentation put into a property management system are stored within the software. The software allows you to use the data to run analyses that will give insights into the business’s financial performance. With accurate, untampered data, you can tell if your real estate business is profitable or not. Other than that, the data is very resourceful in making decisions. For example, if a lot of expense is going into maintenance, you can renovate the property wholesomely to a modern state. Alternatively, you can opt to sell the old property and acquire a new one. All these decisions are meant to enhance the performance of your business.
Get A Property Management System
The advantages of property management automation stretch from marketing your business to helping you run it efficiently to analyzing its performance. It’s, therefore, a much-needed technology that every real estate business looking to be successful should adopt.