Remember that weight loss plan you took off on at the beginning of 2010? While New Year’s Resolutions often become laughably non-effective, there’s no denying that now is as good of a time as ever to at least conduct a review of your property management practices and create an action plan to improve upon your weaknesses in 2011. These links will identify areas of your property management practice to analyze and recommend some changes for new-found efficiency.

• In reviewing how your business did in 2010, you may want to conduct a thorough SWOT analysis. In fact, this might be a great end of year practice to work into your business annually.
• Many property management companies start off when someone relocates and decides to rent their own home, through an inheritance, or by some other indirect means. If this is the case, it may be worth writing out a formal business plan for your property management business.
• Not sure where to start? Chances are your tenants know exactly what you could be doing better. After all, these are the people who call your property home. A tenant satisfaction survey may provide just the insight you need.
• Let’s face it — nothing is more critical to running a successful property management business than knowing exactly where you stand financially. This property management accounting book will help to ensure that you understand your reporting and know where you stand.

Comments »

Property Management Software Rental Property Management Software Landlord Software HOA Software Property Management

As 2010 draws to a close, now is a good time to reflect on the past year. Don’t just think about what didn’t work in 2010; also think about what did work. After all, the goal is to find what works and stick with it rather than constantly changing how you do things.

For an overview of where 2010 leaves you, begin by honestly asking yourself the following two questions:

1. What were the high points this past year?
2. What were the low points this past year?

When you’ve answered both of these questions, you should have a good idea of where you stand. Say, for example, you filled 40 percent of your  vacancies through tenant referrals. This probably means you’re doing a great job keeping your units in shape and keeping tenants happy. In other words, you’ve found a formula that works. Keep it up.

Now suppose 15 percent of your tenants made at least one late rent payment in 2010. That might mean it’s time to examine how you collect rent – your policies and procedures. Maybe you’re too accommodating or perhaps you should allow tenants to pay rent online or sign up for automatic withdrawals each month.

In addition to reflecting on the past twelve months, this is also a great time to take care of all those things you’ve been “meaning to get around to.” Think of the New Year as the fresh start you’ve been wishing for.  Has your property management company already incorporated the following measures?

• A maintenance request system to resolve fixes and repairs efficiently?
• Automated systems wherever possible (accounting, rent payments, work orders, etc.) for accuracy and efficiency?
• An online marketing strategy, whether that be a full-blown website, email newsletters, or online vacancy advertising platforms?
• A solid tenant screening system?

If you are unable to check any one of the above items off, perhaps 2011 is the year to incorporate these programs into your business.

We hope you’ll let us know about your property management company’s goals and resolutions for 2011. Here’s to a happy and prosperous New Year!

Comments »

Property Management Software Rental Property Management Software Landlord Software HOA Software Property Management

Holiday decorations can be an unexpected and inexpensive way to add some cheer to your properties. Ultimately it’s all about making your tenants feel appreciated and making your property feel like home. Let’s face it — taking steps to ensure tenant satisfaction makes your job that much easier. It’s all about tenant retention. These links will help keep your tenants happy and your vacancy rates low.

• While holiday decorations and other similar surprises go a long way towards creating tenant satisfaction, the ability to gauge tenant satisfaction is just as important.
• Lease renewal incentives are another great way to make your tenants happy and to ensure that your good tenants stay put. From a tenant’s perspective, what’s better than getting some cash back for sticking around a property they already like?
• Pyramid Properties goes so far as to actually hand out a short, one page tenant satisfaction survey. Give it a look — could your property management company benefit from this type of information?
• BOMI is to thank for this guide to Creating a Tenant Retention Program — is your company conducting exit interviews?

Comments »

Property Management Software Rental Property Management Software Landlord Software HOA Software Property Management

It’s the holiday season, and no one wants to be the neighborhood Scrooge. Those tenants that want to go all out when it comes to decorating for the holidays can do so in their own units, but it’s also nice to incorporate subtle bits of holiday cheer to the common areas of your property. Think of it as one of those little touches that demonstrates your ongoing investment in and appreciation of your tenants. Holiday decorations are a great low-budget way to make your property more cozy and cheerful for tenants. After all, tenants who truly feel like their units are “home” will be far less likely to move.

Decorating doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, nor do you have to decorate with items that require a lot of upkeep (as we all know, Christmas trees, though fun to look at, can require a lot of regular attention when it comes to sweeping up and keeping them watered–not to mention the fact that a dry tree can be a fire hazard). Consider incorporating one or more of these simple items to jazz up your properties with some holiday cheer.

Light it Up
While hanging lights around the entire exterior of your property may be more effort than you want to exert, lights can provide a quick holiday fix when used in other ways–wind them around banisters or string them in pre-existing plants in common areas. A conservative amount of lights is extremely affordable at common chains like CVS and Target (a string of 100 incandescent white lights go for as little as $3.99 at CVS). If you want, you can pay a bit more up-front for LED lights, which are more energy-efficient than their incandescent counterparts, though according to MyMoneyBlog.com, LED lights will ultimately only save you less than a $1 a year on electricity costs.

Seasonal Smells
Don’t forget that infusing a sense of holiday festivity into your property doesn’t just have to be a visual thing—you can also incorporate evocative, cozy holiday smells like cinnamon, pumpkin, and pine into interior common areas. If you want a bit of a visual effect to accompany the smell, consider placing pine cones, potpourri, or a decorative scent warmer in a festive container in a common area. If you’re just going for smell, you can do something as simple as a holiday-scented fragrance-plug-in, available at most grocery stores for around $5. Remember, though, some people are extremely sensitive to smell, so be careful that whatever scent you select isn’t overly-powerful. Ultimately, you want to achieve a hint–as opposed to an onslaught–of fragrance.

Tasty Treats
The holidays bring out the sweet tooth in all of us. It sounds so simple, but just putting out a decorative bowl of holiday candy in a common area for tenants to enjoy can be enough to put a smile on their face at the end of a long day. Just remember to replenish the candy stash every few days throughout the holiday season.

Just a little bit of effort and nominal expense on your part during this merry season can be enough to keep your tenants smiling for months to come. What are some of your favorite ways to ring in the holidays at your property?

Comments »

Property Management Software Rental Property Management Software Landlord Software HOA Software Property Management

We need your help! Throughout the course of writing the Buildium Blog we’ve covered countless property management scenarios. We hope that our property management tips, advice, and best practices have been helpful to your company — at the very least we hope that they have provided you with an opportunity to reflect on the way that your company does business.

We constantly hear stories from property managers — those of you who are out there managing your properties day-in and day-out — pertaining to specific challenges, nightmares, or unique occurrences encountered on the job. Whether your story is funny, horrifying, or enlightening we’d like to give you the opportunity to share. Buildium will now be accepting submissions for our “Property Management Stories from the Front Lines” series of blog posts.

So what do you need to do? Send us an e-mail detailing your story and what you think makes it unique. The best stories will become a series of blog posts on the Buildium Blog, which can then be weighed in on by other industry professionals. In exchange for your story we will highlight your company, your expertise, and your company website at the end of each post. This will provide great visibility for your business, and great discussion points for all of our readers.

Please e-mail submissions to geoff@buildium.com. We look forward to hearing your story!

-The Buildium Team

Comments »

Property Management Software Rental Property Management Software Landlord Software HOA Software Property Management

In many ways, the current economic climate makes for a great time to purchase a multi-family investment property. The prominence of short sales and foreclosures has given way to good purchase prices in many areas of the country. Add to this the fact that there are some incredible interest rates out there right now (even for investors) and the fact that many former homeowners have now found themselves back in the rental market, and there’s a very valid argument that this is a good time to get into the multi-family market. If you are considering making a multi-family property investment of your own, following are a few things to consider before taking the leap.

Know what you’re looking for
Before you even begin to look at properties, have a clear idea of what you’re looking for and what you’re willing to put into a property, both financially and in terms of your time. Of course, this is always subject to change if you find just the right place, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t go into the house-hunting process without a fairly narrow baseline in mind. Aside from basics like location and size, you also want to have know whether you’re looking for a “fixer-upper” or a “as-is” property.

Look at the whole package
Looking for a multi-family investment property is different from looking for a single-family home and requires a bit more of a discerning eye. Remember that you will be renting multiple units out to different tenants. To protect your financial investment, you need to be sure that each and every unit will appeal to (or can be transformed into a unit that will appeal to) renters. If, for example, you’re looking at a four-plex with three units that are in stellar “as-is” condition, but a fourth unit has problems which are extremely difficult and expensive to fix (lack of windows, rotted flooring, etc.), you may be best to keep looking. Even if you are able to easily rent out the first three units, covering the mortgage may be difficult should that fourth unit go unoccupied for an extended period of time. With each unit—and the property’s common areas—ask yourself one basic question: Is this somewhere I would want to live?

Determining your desired profit margin
In any property buying scenario, there’s always financial work to be done beforehand: figuring out what you can spend up front, how much you can afford per month, and going through the logistics of the pre-approval process. But when it comes to purchasing a multi-family investment property, you are in some ways taking other parties’ finances into account as well. Begin by determining how much rental income you will need to generate on a monthly basis to cover the cost of not only the property mortgage, but also regular expenses like water, sewer, garbage, and property taxes.

After you’ve done this, perform a very careful analysis of comparable rental properties in your area to ensure that you can command the rental income necessary to cover these expenses—remember, this is most frequently not an even split. The one-bedroom upstairs with great views will likely command significantly more rental income than the studio downstairs. In addition to figuring out average rental prices, you will also want to figure out local vacancy rates. Not only do you want to know that you can ask for your desired rent amount, but you also want to know that you will be able to fill vacancies fairly easily. Even a single lingering vacant unit can have an extremely adverse affect on your property’s financial situation.

For even more tips on finding just the right property for your portfolio, be sure to check out our previous blog posts on building a property investment checklist and selecting just the right location for your new investment property.

Comments »

Property Management Software Rental Property Management Software Landlord Software HOA Software Property Management

Our blog post earlier this week on 2011 Property Management Conferences and Seminars gave you all of the information you could need on which conferences are most worth attending, their dates, and their locations. While most people agree that conferences sound like a great idea, the practicality and cost of these events is often cause for some trepidation. We want this to be the year that you make the plunge — we hit the blogosphere to help prove to you (or your boss!) that conferences are worth your while.

• This article will help you justify and quantify the benefits of conference attendance, even providing a template to help you figure out the cost-benefit ratio of your organization’s attendance.
• Monster.com’s career advice center provides some insight on how you can maximize the benefits of attending conferences within your industry.
• According to this blogger, conferences have several benefits that often don’t come top-of-mind — they offer a chance to step back and reflect on your business and are valuable in breaking up your daily routine and tasks.
• This “definitive guide” to conference attendance offers some useful tips regarding preparing yourself for a conference a week or two before the actual event.

Comments »

Property Management Software Rental Property Management Software Landlord Software HOA Software Property Management

As we begin to look forward to closing another year out, it’s a great time to look ahead and get your ducks in a row for 2011. Aside from all of the  information and lessons you glean out on the property management field on a daily basis, incorporating continuing education into your professional program is a great way to ensure you continue growing and perfecting both your business and your personal skill sets. Though complete certifications and ongoing classes may simply be unfeasible for some of us, property management related seminars and conferences are a great time-efficient way to add to your knowledge base.

2011 NAA Education Conference and Exposition
June 23-25, 2011
Las Vegas, Nevada

The National Apartment Association tags this event as the opportunity to “educate, energize, and empower” yourself and your organization. This well-attended event brings together 5,000 multi-family housing professionals from across the nation and 300 service providers, not to mention a wealth of high-profile keynote speakers, including Condoleezza Rice.

NPMA 2011 National Education Seminar
July 25-28, 2011
Las Vegas, Nevada

Hosted by the National Property Management Association, this multi-day seminar provides a wealth of practical business advice, offered from a wide variety of field experts who have an in-depth working knowledge of how property management works from the inside out. In addition to seminars, the NPMA also offers break-out groups that allow attendees to discuss special interests with colleagues and experts.

23^rd Annual NARPM Convention & Trade Show
October 19-21, 2011
Dallas, Texas

As the largest professional association in the property management field, the National Association of Residential Property Managers’ annual convention provides a great opportunity to network and share information with your colleagues. You can also attend targeted seminars from professional guest speakers, a number of education classes and workshops, and even walk away with some new certifications for just a few hours’ worth of your time.

NARPM Regional Conferences
Various dates and locations (see below)

If NARPM’s national convention sounds good, but you are simply unable to make the trip to Texas, consider attending one of their regional conferences, which occur between February and May 2011. These regional conferences have their own benefits, offering all of the same networking and information sharing, but also allowing you to surround yourself with property managers who, because of their close proximity, are often dealing with the same state and local laws, issues, and circumstances as you are — often allowing for more targeted communication and even grassroots action.

Southwest Regional (Scottsdale, Arizona) – February 17 & 18
California (San Jose, California) – March 21-24
Southeast Regional (Virginia Beach, VA) – April 14 & 15
South Central Regional (Little Rock, Arkansas) – April 29 & 30
Northwest Regional (Missoula, Montana) – May 20 & 21

Of course, the conferences and seminars above only begin to touch on the information available out there. In addition to property management specific conferences and seminars, you may also want to consider attending local or regional conferences on other subjects that are applicable to property management and will help you hone your skills and better your business, including:

-       Leadership
-       Customer Service
-       FHA Rules and Regulations
-       Investment
-       Green Building and Business

We recommend that you incorporate at least one or two educational and networking events on an annual basis—the investment of time and money is relatively low and we’re willing to bet you’ll be amazed at the impact on your business and idea generation that can result from these events!

Comments »

Property Management Software Rental Property Management Software Landlord Software HOA Software Property Management

If you are not cognizant of your business practices, your goals, and the need to review both from time to time there are many pitfalls that can trip up your property management business. Just as it’s important to recognize signs your property management company is a success, you need to be aware of obstacles in the road as well. The following links will help you more successfully direct your property management company.

• If your company is not receiving many tenant referrals, you may want to implement a tenant referral program to keep those vacancies as low as possible.
• The best way to assure that you have as few issues with tenants as possible is to implement a rigorous tenant screening process. Is your methodology up to snuff?
• Sure, maybe your grandmother still refers to the refrigerator as the icebox, but times have changed. If you’re not listing your rentals effectively online, you’re not doing all that you can to market your vacancies.
• This article specifically outlines some of the most common tenant problems, suggesting ways that you can fix them to better your business.

Comments »

Property Management Software Rental Property Management Software Landlord Software HOA Software Property Management