Good property managers are hard to come by, and if your property managers face problems in handling business, you need to look into it. Without qualified and competent property managers, you will be left with a prominent real estate portfolio, multiple tenants and no one to manage them. To not lose the best of your staff and grow your portfolio, talk to your property managers and find out the practical and everyday problems they face and address them immediately.
Even with the latest technology selection project management and multiple employees, the Unicom study reveals that property managers still face many issues. As a starter, we have listed the common problems in property management that industry experts have highlighted. Read this article to know more about them and get a better idea of how to solve them.
What is stressing out your property managers?
Property management is a very demanding job; a property manager has to don multiple different hats and excel at many roles to keep the real estate business up and running. Unicom market report says that more than 27% of property managers struggle to hire competent staff and have difficulty retaining them. And this is just one of the many problems they face. From growing the company revenue to maintaining cordial tenant relations, the challenges are endless and more keep adding up by the day.
11 major problems in property management
Here we have carefully curated a list of the top problems most property managers face to help you understand your business better. As a real estate business owner, you must be updated about these to help your property managers in their hour of need.
Risks of portfolio management
There are many risks involved in portfolio management, like keeping all your properties safe, following all government guidelines, making them energy-efficient and more. If there are any uninhabitable living conditions in any of the buildings, tenants can end up filing legal cases, and you will be left with a lot of legal notices and draining bank accounts.
Chasing time to make sales
Property management also involves a lot of sales and marketing work, and if that does not happen at the right time, then it can be fatal for the business. Your competition will get ahead of you, and that is another daily stress that property managers keep struggling with. Unicom survey also pointed out that more than 38% of property managers said growing and maintaining revenue was another one of their biggest challenges.
Insufficient technology usage
Using excel sheets and using no technology at all is a wrong move for any real estate business. This is a fast-paced industry; here, you blink, and you miss. Customers will drop off like flies if you do not use proper technologies to handle your business and your clients. From starting virtual home tours to providing smart home devices, technology selection in real estate is quite diverse these days. You can also automate things like contract signing, budgeting and forecasting, and tenant onboarding with the right property management software integration.
Rising operating and maintenance costs
Operating and maintaining properties is a costly affair, and the Common Area Maintenance charges come from the tenants at the year-end. But tenants are always of the opinion that they are paying more than required, so finding the cheapest yet the best maintenance solution is a task that property managers have to handle. Also, raising the operating costs from sales comes under their purview, making it quite a mix of responsibilities.
Incompetent staff and lagging in back office work
More than 38% of property managers said that getting good staff to work for them was challenging. Everything takes a hit when the staff is incompetent, then back office work, accounting, coordination between teams, and even marketing campaigns. The strategy and leadership need to be rethought in a way that you can screen potential employees better and hire more skilled staff to help in property management.
Tenant turnovers and lease renewals
When tenants leave, and contracts do not get renewed, it means property managers and real estate agents are left with empty houses, which means a lack of revenue. From finding enough incentives for tenants to renew their leases to stop tenant turnovers to hunting for new tenants with new marketing plans, all of it has to be handled by property managers.
Managing tenant complaints
When businesses deal with people, especially tenants, they have a thousand different complaints like maintenance issues, amenities issues, etc. Handling and addressing all of them individually can feel like a nightmare; that is where RPA chatbots can help in automating your communications with your tenants and potential customers.
Keeping up with governmental compliances
There are multiple different governmental compliances that a property manager has to keep up with. From filing taxes on time to keeping safety guidelines in check, the list goes on.
Property inspections and audits
Property inspections, account audits, energy audits, or even lease audits, a lot of paperwork goes into all of it and property managers need to have all kinds of documents ready on the go to get the job done in time. Automating the data management process can quickly help solve this problem for your business.
Being constantly on-call
Property managers always have to act on the go, no matter where they are. Tenant problems, construction management, and maintenance work hardly follow any time schedules, and problems can crop up at any time without prior notice. Automating some of these interactions with property management software and RPA chatbots can help in streamlining the process.
Unexpected damages
Unicom reports also found out that 14% of property managers said unexpected damages to properties are a huge challenge in property management. These damages can be caused by tenant activities, natural calamities, major faults in pipelines and more and can lead to a living nightmare for the managers.
Finding the right property management software
Are you looking to improve your property management system and help your property managers? Confused about the technology selection? The Assetsoft team is here to help, from advising on the right software for your business to providing an end-to-end integration solution. We provide integration and staff training for some of the topmost property management software in the market like Yardi or MRI; our team can do it all.
To know more about our work, contact us today!