Apartments & Rentals

Are you constantly fielding inbound calls at your property management office? Do you find that you are spending a lot of money printing and mailing documents, event invites, or rent statements? Or, are you trying to find ways to gain the trust of your tenants and improve engagement? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then it\’s important to consider implementing a tenant portal for your apartment community. In this article, we discuss 10 reasons why a tenant portal can be a great asset for your apartment community.    

What is a tenant portal?

First, let’s consider what a tenant portal is.  A tenant portal allows tenants to log into a website and view information about the unit and community.  The portal login is personalized to an individual tenant’s experience.  The portal organizes important unit information such as financial balances, payments, work orders, and communication preferences.  It also helps a tenant get connected to the apartment community through events, documents, surveys, and other features.

10 reasons why you should provide a tenant portal

When a tenant portal consists of information your tenants find valuable, it can be a great tool for your business. Let\’s take a look at 10 reasons why you should provide a tenant portal, and how it benefits management and tenants.

1) Access to 24×7 information, anywhere

With information readily available on the internet, it is no longer a luxury to provide unit and property information online. In fact, your tenants have come to expect it. A tenant portal that is user-friendly, modern, and is mobile-responsive allows your tenants to easily access information from anywhere. 24×7 access to unit and community information anywhere gives your tenants peace of mind, so they can thoroughly enjoy the apartment-living experience.

2) Display financial balances & allow residents to make online payments

The convenience of an online payment system gives your tenants a contactless way to pay their rent on time.  The portal also provides tenants with an easy way to view their balance and ledger in real-time.

3) Encourage tenants to update their own information

Give tenants the ability to update their own information. For example, the information they should update includes phone and email address, contacts, vehicles, pets, insurance, and more.  The reason why this is so critical is so that management has accurate information when there is an emergency situation and need to send bulk messages.

4) One of the best ways to communicate with your tenants

You may already be communicating with your tenants through email, phone, and text.  The tenant portal is another way you can communicate with your tenants and keep them informed. 

5) Build a sense of community

Tenants want to have a sense of belonging in the community they live in.  Therefore, it’s important that through the tenant portal, you’re able to build a positive community culture and living experience.  

How do you build a sense of community through a resident portal?

• Organize virtual events to bring your tenants together, get them excited to participate, and keep them connected.  Display the events in a calendar with a link to join and send them an email notification with details.  
• Send a survey to your tenants at least twice a year to understand how they feel about your services and what you can do better to improve the experience for them. That way, your tenants know that you value their opinion and are open to doing something about it.

6) Increase transparency with your tenants

Maintaining transparent operations and communicating about what you do helps build trust in management.  The way a tenant portal helps build transparency is through keeping tenants informed about their unit and what is happening in the community.

How can you increase transparency through the portal?

• As mentioned earlier, display financial balances in real-time so tenants can go back and see what they paid. 
• Answer commonly asked questions or post documents about your company policy, lease agreements, amenity rules, and maintenance equipment.  
• Communicate to your tenants regularly about what is happening in the community, work order updates, and more.

7) Generate more renewals through increased tenant satisfaction

Tenants expect to hear from management more frequently with updates they care about.  When you keep tenants informed, they will be more satisfied with your customer service.  They’ll also be more likely to renew their lease year after year if you provide consistent value to them. 

8) Save time and improve operational efficiency

A portal eliminates a lot of manual work that managers would otherwise have to do to maintain their properties and keep track of tenants.  An online payment system in your tenant portal eliminates the need for managers to go to the bank or scan checks in.  Having your tenants update their contact information decreases the chance of your messages missing the inbox and going back and forth with them to correct it.  Managers can also reduce inbound calls and emails to the office by answering commonly asked questions in the portal, sending messages, and emailing the progress on maintenance requests. 

9) Increase Net Operating Income (NOI)

As we stated earlier, a well-maintained portal reduces manual work for managers.  What if you could spend less time fielding inbound calls? What if you could save money by transitioning documents, announcements, and updates online?  Management would be able to significantly reduce operating expenses and increase the profitability or the net operating income (NOI) of the property. 

10) Impress new prospects

A well-maintained portal is a significant part of the value you promise to deliver to your prospective tenants.  Since today\’s renters want transparency and ease of access to information, a portal can provide the advantage your company needs over a competing property that may not have a portal (or a modern, easy to use portal).  

Take your apartment community experience online with Pilera

Pilera\’s integrated property management suite – communication, maintenance, customer support, and tenant portal – all work together to help you deliver the level of customer service your tenants expect and grow your company. Pilera\’s tenant portal increases tenant satisfaction through self-service features such as occupant management, online payment, work order requests, tenant directory, and more. Through the portal, managers reduce operational expenses and thus increase NOI with features such as automatic email updates to tenants, documents, knowledge base, events, and more.

To learn more about how Pilera can help you better manage properties and increase tenant satisfaction, contact us at [email protected].

As a property manager, front desk staff, or security personnel for gated communities or apartments, ensuring the safety of your premises for your employees, contractors, residents, and guests is the top priority.  At Pilera we’re thrilled to announce a new Visitor Management System that will make it easy for you to track alternate contacts/guests in your community and find information pertaining to them quickly.  The new feature enables you to save your staff time while protecting your community, having peace of mind for everyone, and making a good impression on your guests and residents.   

Save time with Pilera\’s new visitor management system

Your residents can add in their own guests in Pilera, their contact number and address, as well as note the type of guest.  This saves management time as they instantly know who the resident has approved to visit them.  Now, with Pilera\’s new visitor management tool, it’s easier than ever for managers to see all alternate contacts/guests in a community and do a search on their name, occupant name, or unit.  Pilera’s suite of management tools is mobile-responsive, which means that staff can manage visitors anywhere.  

Protect your community and gain peace of mind for all

The new visitor management system helps property managers, front desk staff, and security personnel to instantly identify the type of guest, the purpose of the visit, the resident they’re visiting, if they are an emergency contact, any special needs they may have, or even if that guest is not allowed on the property or community.  Protect your community by knowing who is entering the community or building and gain peace of mind for your staff, residents, their families, and guests.  

Always connect a guest to a resident

Guests are tracked at a person-level.  Even if an owner owns multiple units, you can easily find the contact associated with that owner.  Notes associated with the contact can help you better identify them and their purpose for visiting.  

Detailed guest, owner and unit information at your fingertips

When a guest or visitor arrives at your community or property, you’ll have all relevant information at your fingertips.  The visitor management tool provides a direct link to access each contact, the resident they are associated with, or the unit they are associated with.  You can quickly open the record to lookup or edit contact information, as well as update the notes section.  Notes can be used to detail specific information about a guest, such as to contact them only in an emergency.  You can even use it to track when they last entered the community or if they require any assistance.  The visitor management system helps you ensure the safety of your community, better manage compliance with respect to guest policies, and provide a welcoming experience to your resident’s guests. 

How can I get Visitor Management for my community or building?

The Visitor Management feature is included in Pilera’s Condo & Rental product, which gives managers enhanced tracking capability for resident data such as leases, insurance, pets, alternate addresses, and more.  Pilera’s product offering is a-la-carte, which means that you can pick and choose the products your business or individual communities need.  No more paying extra for products you don’t need!  If you would like to learn more about how the Condo & Rental product or Pilera’s suite of property management tools can benefit your communities today, connect with us at [email protected].    

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About Pilera

Pilera Software is the premier community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations. May we help your community achieve these success stories? Contact us to see how Pilera’s community management suite can help your company.

One of the most important responsibilities for any property manager is to communicate with their tenants.  In the long-term, communicating frequently with tenants will enable many benefits for the property manager.  Keeping communication at the center of the customer service strategy helps managers to better understand and cater to their tenant’s needs while tenants will have gained better insight into the unit they invest in.  In this blog post, we discuss the long-term benefits that consistent property management communication has for the company.

1) Increased value for your business

Tenant retention drives immense value for your business and increases the bottom line, which is why it’s one of the most important functions of managing apartments.  According to RentPrep, when you successfully retain one tenant itself, the company can save an average of $1,750 per unit per month from tenant turnover costs like administrative work, vacancy, and marketing. For a property of 100 units with a 95% retention rate, property management companies save close to $2 million per year.  The best way to avoid turnover and increase retention is to keep your communications with tenants ongoing.

2) A sense of community in your properties

Following up with tenants regularly helps you to build a long-term relationship with them.  In turn, they feel that they are part of the community. They will be more invested in the place they call home.  Building positive relations will also lead to more harmony and fewer conflicts that managers would otherwise need to dedicate their time to.  Here are a few ways that you can keep in touch with residents and foster positive apartment culture:

• When the tenant moves in, send them a welcome packet.  The packet should contain information on amenities available and policies, service expectations, contact information, how to pay rent, and any local services to help them get acclimated in the area.
• Check-in with your new tenants regularly. Ask them how the move-in experience has been and if you could have made the transition better.
• Build tenant engagement by sending monthly newsletters.  Talk about company news (such as a new property manager joining), events, and other important news within the town.
• Provide tenants with a list of resources for recreational or educational activities.
• Invite tenants to online social events or informational webinars.

3) Increase the Lifetime Value of a Customer (LTV)

Acquiring new tenants is much costlier and time-consuming than retaining a current tenant. Getting new tenants to sign on a lease costs thousands of dollars in marketing and vacancy expenses. Retaining a tenant is less-time consuming when you have good customer service and communication strategy. Tenants will be happier and are more willing to renew their lease with you. The longer tenants stay at the apartment, the higher the lifetime value of the tenant, or LTV. For example, if the average rent a tenant pays is $850/month and the average length of time they stay at an apartment is 3 years, your LTV is $30,600 per tenant. Consider how you can communicate with your tenants to increase the likelihood of renewals and LTV.

• Keep your tenants in the loop about building or unit maintenance throughout the progress.
• Send a survey to your tenants often. This will help you to maintain a pulse on tenant\’s expectations of your service, the building, and their unit. Additionally, it will make them feel that their opinion is valued.
• Send an email to your tenants when their lease is coming up for renewal. In your email, thank them for being a valued tenant, set the rent expectations (whether you are increasing or decreasing rent and why), and make the action for them to take clear.

4) Maintain the safety of your tenants

Many apartment communities face either human or natural-related disasters.  Be proactive and inform residents quickly on what is occurring because it’s critical to ensuring safety and saving lives.  Especially in light of the ongoing pandemic, it’s imperative for property managers to let tenants know about sanitization measures, amenity policies, and contactless payment methods, or any temporary payment deferment opportunities.  Pilera’s apartment clients have communicated to tenants about shelter-in-place orders and/or the relaxation of them, amenity policies (closings, re-openings, and sanitization measures), how to make online payments, and ways they plan to support tenants.  Providing helpful resources and information at the right time gives tenants peace of mind and builds their trust in management.

Reaching out to your tenants on a regular basis with relevant information is crucial to improving their experience and perception of your company.  The property management company is in a better position to build a positive reputation and revenue growth. 

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About Pilera

Pilera Software is a premier property management platform that empowers multifamily, HOA, and condominium management companies to deliver superior customer service and staff collaboration.  To learn more about how Pilera’s communication platform can work for your company today, contact us at [email protected].    

QuickBooks, an Intuit company, is a leading accounting platform that is used by over 7 million customers nationwide*.  Many growing property management companies serving multifamily markets use QuickBooks to develop budgets, pay vendors, and manage company finances.  Pilera is a property management software that integrates with the QuickBooks Online version.  Multifamily businesses using QuickBooks Online can take business operations and resident engagement to the next level by syncing their account with Pilera.  In this blog article, we discuss the benefits of integrating your QuickBooks Online account with Pilera Software to seamlessly manage your properties and deliver superior customer service.

1) Eliminate manual entry

Pilera has a two-way integration with QuickBooks Online, which means that your data is consistent and accurate in both systems.  The two-way integration reduces any error that may occur during manual entry.

2) Maintain the integrity of your information

Integrating with an accounting system ensures that your accounting department stays separate from your management department.  Through QuickBooks Online, your accounting staff will manage the financial health of your multifamily business while in Pilera, your management staff will handle customer service operations.

3) Gain insight into your units

With unit and address information frequently syncing from QuickBooks Online to Pilera, managers can easily keep track and manage their units in one place.  Many other property management platforms do not provide a comprehensive unit history, but in Pilera, managers can maintain the unit’s history as tenants move in and out.  This enables property managers to quickly look-up unit information as they are helping current tenants or while they are preparing a unit for a new tenant to move in.   At any time, managers can see the unit history for:

• Occupants, communication preferences, contact information, and account number.
• Lease – Start and end dates, deposits, and move-in/move-out dates.
• Vehicle – View all vehicles associated with the unit.
• Work Orders – View currently open or all service requests.
• Unit Logs – Keep track of important or support requests for a unit.

4) Connect with your tenants through synced contact information

With the two-way integration, resident contact information (emails and phone numbers) are synced back and forth from QuickBooks Online to Pilera.  Financial balances are also synced from QuickBooks to Pilera so that residents can easily look up their balance and make payments.

Once the resident contact information is in Pilera, managers can provide tenants with a self-service portal where they can view important property and unit information, submit service requests, and update contact information for management.  When tenants update their contact information in Pilera, it is synced over to QuickBooks Online.  This saves property managers time while ensuring that they have accurate contact information to send tenants notices.  Managers can also:

• Send announcements and messages through the contact method (text, email, or phone) and the language tenants prefer.
• Send documents, events, and package notifications.
• Maintain a full history of the tenant\’s interactions with the apartment management in one place: communication, documents, activity logs, financial balances, work orders, insurance, contact information, lease information, and more.

Streamline your customer service today

Integrating your QuickBooks Online account with Pilera can streamline your customer service operations and make managing your properties easier.  Property managers can maintain the integrity of data by reducing manual errors. Additionally, once managers have accurate resident contact and unit information, they can deliver superior customer service to their prospective and current tenants with confidence.  If you would like to learn more about how Pilera’s integration with QuickBooks Online can work for your property management company today, you can get a personalized demo.

*Disclaimer: This information is from the QuickBooks company website and reflects the statistics at the time of this writing.

Property management companies have a constant goal to improve their competitive position while managing everyday operations.  While working to achieve those goals, property managers may face several challenges: delivering top-notch customer service, managing regular and unexpected maintenance, and improving staff efficiency.  Cloud-based technology systems where features integrate well with each other can help property managers battle those challenges and drive greater success.  In this post, we’ll talk about top property management challenges, technologies, and how Pilera’s own property management software can help drive success.

Top 3 Property Management Challenges

1. Delivering quality customer service

Customer experience can make or break a company.  As customer experience impacts success at every level of an organization from productivity to employee satisfaction to revenue growth, it’s important to make it the core of everything you do.  However, things can get tough when a property manager’s phone lines and email inboxes become uncontrollable, tasks are forgotten, and tenants start sharing negative experiences on social media or Yelp.

To deliver a customer service experience that goes beyond the tenant’s expectations, it’s important to focus on their needs.  In the digital age and more recently during stay/safer-at-home orders, tenants expect to have information at the fingertips.  If they’ve asked for your assistance, they also expect to hear back from you in a timely manner.  A customer relationship management tool can help property managers proactively meet those expectations.  Pilera’s platform is specifically designed to help property managers elevate the customer experience for residents through a self-service tenant portal, fast and reliable communication system, and activity log management.  A well-maintained, self-service resident portal with online payment capability, documents, calendars, and an FAQ section can reduce the need for a tenant to call or email the office, significantly saving managers time.  An automated communication system with the capability to reach out to tenants how they want will leave them with a positive perception of your company.  In turn, when tenants reach out to you, capturing all of your interactions and resolutions with them in one place helps you to further nurture relationships and increase the chance of renewals.

2. Managing regular and unexpected maintenance

It can be a challenge to stay ahead of multiple maintenance projects – whether they are regular maintenance items, resident submitted, or unexpected maintenance. Unexpected maintenance can heavily strain company resources, specifically finances, employee workload, and vendor availability, as well as introduce liability.

For property managers to stay on top of maintenance projects efficiently and accurately, they need to be able to pull in their staff, tenants, and vendors all in one system.  Pilera’s comprehensive maintenance tracking system helps property managers stay on top of tasks they need to get done on any device or location and review the resolution with after-job details.  Additionally, Pilera’s work order management system integrates seamlessly with the vendor database, which means that managers can keep track of vendor contact and license information, ratings, assign them to work orders, and notify them through email.  Managers receive license expiration notices so that they know which vendors to call upon short notice, for unexpected maintenance, or during emergencies.  Furthermore, managers will field fewer inbound calls to the office when residents can submit service requests themselves and view updates in the portal.

3. Improving staff productivity

A property manager’s day is never slow or completely predictable!  When things happen that change the course of the day or week, it’s possible for tasks to be forgotten or set aside.  How to improve the productivity of your staff in a fast-paced environment starts with efficiently managing their time and improving their processes.  When property management leaders can improve staff productivity effectively, they are more likely to reduce staff turnover and attract more quality property managers.

How do you make the best use of their time and improve their processes?  Be sure to assign tasks, set a due date, and encourage your staff to provide updates as they go.  Tracking all these actions in a unified system will prevent your staff from having to shuffle through a lengthy email chain for the latest update or call their coworkers.  Through Pilera’s ticketing system, staff can manage all their tasks from start to finish.  At the start of each day, they can use the ticket dashboard to see all the work assigned to them for the day.  Property managers and company executives can use the ticket analytics report within Pilera to identify which properties are generating the most tickets, which staff members are overloaded, and where to shift workload for better performance on a busy day. 

Turn your challenges into successes

Looking to turn these property management challenges into success for your company and staff?  Be sure to go beyond your tenant’s expectations with concise and frequent communication.  Keep all stakeholders informed when they need to be when it comes to maintaining your properties effectively.  Check-in with how your staff is performing and how you can shift workload for better performance.  A cloud-based, integrated, and collaborative technology platform can help property managers and leaders stay on task and on the go, as they work toward building a competitive advantage and operating efficiently.

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About Pilera

Pilera Software is a leading property management software company that offers diverse solutions for the multifamily and rental industry. Pilera specializes in automated phone, email, and text messaging. Increase tenant engagement through resident portals with online payment, document sharing, and work order management, as well as a wide array of other management features. To learn how you can take your management operations to the next level with Pilera, you can sign up for a personalized demo.

Greetings, this is Ashish Patel, the CEO and President of Pilera Software, LLC. 

We understand it is of utmost importance to our clients to effectively and reliably communicate with their board members and residents.  As concerns of COVID-19 (“Coronavirus”) continually increase in the United States and working arrangements change, we wanted to inform our customers how we plan to support their ability to work with their communities.  We are committed to ensuring the uninterrupted delivery of our platform and customer support services to you. Here\’s how we are ready for the situation:

Amazon Web Services

Pilera’s software platform is built on the Amazon Web Services, which has fault prevention built into it.  This allows us to move our app to safer areas if the need arises. Also, because our software is cloud-based and self-sufficient, our managers, board members, and residents can access it on any device, location, browser, and at any time of the day.  A client, Cynthia, the President of Stratford Towers, encountered an emergency during Hurricane Irma. She stated, “During Hurricane Irma, I was especially grateful to be able to reach all of the owners after evacuating the building… Thank you Pilera for making a terrible hurricane experience a little bit easier for all of us and giving us all a lot more peace of mind… We were able to handle all building needs easily remotely.”

Ability to work remotely

Our office is located in Nashua, New Hampshire, which is far away from the more dense cities.  Thus, our risk of COVID-19 exposure is low. However, if required, Pilera’s staff members are equipped with the tools and resources they need to work remotely to maintain our operations.  Just like our customers, we also utilize cloud-based software so that we can access our daily work from many devices. Some of the technology tools we utilize as a part of our daily operations and will continue to use include:

• Internal communication & video conferencing – Pilera’s staff members are in constant communication through direct messaging and video software with one another to ensure seamless daily operations.
• Help desk software – We are using reliable support software to stay on top of support issues our customers send us.  Our customers can visit our help site at support.pilera.com to retrieve information on using our functionality at any time.
• External communication software – We use a variety of tools such as email and VOIP-based phone systems to ensure effective communication with our clients. 

Employee Health & Safety

If an employee has traveled to any region where the widespread transmission of COVID-19 is current as specified by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), they will be required to self-quarantine for 14 days prior to coming back to the Pilera office.

At Pilera, we understand with the concerns of COVID-19 that business continuity is critical for any community/property management company.  We are continually monitoring the situation and are committed to delivering exceptional and uninterrupted service to our clients. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at [email protected].  We wish for everyone’s safety and good health in this difficult time. 

Best Regards,

Ashish Patel
CEO & President
Pilera Software, LLC

Are you wanting to strengthen your competitive position in the property management market or improve staffing decisions internally?  Well, now in Pilera, management executives will be able to do all this and more with our new Ticket Analytics Reports! Insights from these reports can facilitate decisions on daily operations, customer retention, and new customer acquisition efforts.  The Ticket Analytics Report combines created, closed, and open metrics for all ticket types into one report.

Where you can find the new report:

Navigate to the Work Orders or Activity Logs page in the app and click on “Analytics Report”.  You can further slice and dice this report by selecting a specific community or all communities, date range, and time range up to the minute.  

How the new report can help maximize efficiency in your operations:

1) Gain business insights on a community or portfolio level

The Ticket Analytics Report helps gain valuable business insights on a per community basis or across the entire portfolio of communities. Company Admins (referred to as executives in our post) can generate reports cross-community, and Community Managers (referred to as managers) can generate reports in the communities they are responsible for operating. When the company executive selects “All Communities”, they will be able to see a breakdown of every community and all the created, closed, and open tickets for:

• Work Orders
• Activity Logs
• Tasks
• Architecture Change Requests
• Rule Violations
• Insurance

2) Determine the profitability of a client

For each community, executives will be able to see the number of created, closed, and open tickets.  These metrics are an important indicator of the amount of work your company is performing for the community.  If a community is generating too much work and the costs outweigh the profits, the company may decide not to work with that community.  Company executives can then determine how much to charge back to the community for services rendered or how much to increase the going rate for annual fees based on manager output.  

3) Successfully compete in the property management marketplace

An important goal of management companies is to increase their competitive position in the property management market.  Management companies compete through service offerings and pricing. Business insights from reports are a powerful way for the management company to bring added value to prospects. Their ability to provide these business insights can serve as an important selling factor for the community.  Company executives can also adjust their bid price for the new community by using the work they handle for current clients as a base.

4) Improve staffing decisions

An optimal level of staffing is critical to running daily operations and providing clients with the customer support they expect to receive.  In the Ticket Analytics Report, company executives can view a list of all employees and the tickets they’ve created, closed, or are still open and assigned to them broken down by the type of ticket. These metrics will assist executives in making better-informed decisions to fulfill their staffing needs.  Created tickets versus closed versus open in a time frame will inform executives if their staff is getting overloaded and where to direct their resources for better productivity. This information will also support their decisions to hire more property managers or if building a team of in-house maintenance staff makes more sense.

5) Increase client satisfaction by providing business advice to clients

The Ticket Analytics Report is a great tool to use during management’s weekly meetings with HOA clients.  Key metrics in the report can help in providing board members with essential business advice to make the best decision for their community.  During these weekly meetings, managers can present all the work that has been completed by type of request, from work orders to tasks. Closed tickets versus created tickets can also provide a good indication of whether specific requests are taking too long to complete.  In this case, managers can dig deeper into their data in Pilera. Such advice to the board may be to solicit vendor bids that can reduce response time or enhance the architecture change approvals process to meet resident requests faster. The more informed business advice you provide to your clients, the longer they’ll want to stay with you.  It’s a win-win for all!

Whether your main goals are to improve operational efficiency or increase growth, the new Ticket Analytics Report in Pilera can provide valuable information to make important decisions.  Executives can utilize this report to make decisions that are important for scaling their company’s growth. Property managers can leverage key metrics in the report to provide their HOA clients/board members with critical business advice and increase client satisfaction.  To learn more about the new Ticket Analytics Report and how it can benefit your company and the communities you manage today, contact [email protected].

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About Pilera

Pilera Software is the premier community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations.  May we help your community achieve these success stories?  Book a demo to see how Pilera’s community management suite can help your company. 

The work of property management staff never seems to end. Whether it’s tenants, owners, landlords, contractors, or the endless stream of daily tasks, the days can be grueling.  Knowing that the costs of property management are rising faster, property managers will need to be more efficient and bring more value to their clients.  The best way to achieve balance in the hectic world of property management is through the utilization of Pilera Software\’s suite of products.

Payment Collections:

By providing a secure online payment collection option for residents, you can reduce issues and errors in transactions, and increase resident satisfaction.  This option will provide residents with detailed transaction history of all their community payments, thus allowing residents to view their balance and leger at any time.  This whole process is done invisibly to the property manager so it’s like the task disappears!

Maintenance Requests:

Pilera Software Maintenance suite helps improve efficiency and enhance the resident experience.  Residents can log in to create, update, and review their tickets.  Residents even have the option to attach documents, photos, and other files to the ticket. As the property manager, you can assign tickets to internal staff or external vendors. By using online communications, property managers can auto-notify vendors, and even dispatch a contractor.  This will drastically reduce response time through a single hub to manage thousands of tickets across all your communities. By using the Maintenance Suite, you have streamlined the entire life cycle of your management company’s maintenance process with comprehensive tracking that saves you time!

Reduced Paperwork:

Another robust offering in Pilera Software’s lineup of products is the Resident Portal, those piles of paper in the filing cabinets are the bane of property managers everywhere. Using Pilera Software\’s Document Library found in the Resident Portal, you can eliminate the stress of mailing forms to homeowners! Property Managers can access files easily across multiple communities and increase resident satisfaction with a more secure way of electronic delivery.  With unlimited storage, secure access for residents, and two-way online communication, the Resident Portal is a tool you need to run your management business!

Streamlining your operations using the suite of Pilera Software’s products means you can manage more properties and seriously increase your revenue and profit.  Isn’t it time to bring your communities together with Pilera Software?

Call 1-877-974-5372 or email [email protected] us today!

The property management landscape is becoming more competitive with new players entering an already saturated market and companies struggling to gain new business.  To maintain a sustainable business model and generate revenue, it’s important for management companies to focus on finding fresh new leads that are in need of the service you provide.  In this blog post, we’ll focus on four significant ways to boost lead generation and stand above the competition.

1) Be visible on search engines

When developing or updating your HOA, condo, or rental company website, it is important to make SEO or search engine optimization a priority.  Search engine optimization is an important effort that leads prospects from searching for specific information to your website, discovering that you have an answer to their question and eventually, you can help solve their challenges.  For management companies that service one or more geographic locations, implementing local SEO is critical because association boards and apartment managers will search for a management company in their vicinity. Here are a few SEO tips to help guide your efforts:

• Focus on the keywords that are most important for prospects to find you and implement it in your content, page titles, descriptions, links, and images.
• Implement local keyword search into your SEO strategy.  For example, if you’re a condo company that manages high-rises in Seattle, make sure that your site is discoverable for the keyword.  Pudget Sound Condo Group, for example, does a good job with their local search efforts. They’ve added relevant keywords in its page title, URL, and description – thus, they are on the first page of Google’s search engine.
  
• If your budget allows, spending marketing money on online search ads such as Google Ads or Bing allows you to improve your company’s visibility.  Again, if you’re a local management company, keep in mind how a local HOA board or apartment manager would search for you.
  

2) Make digital marketing a priority

Digital marketing is an important effort that allows companies to increase their reach by sharing knowledge and expertise.  HOA, condo, and rental management companies can benefit from digital marketing by building credibility over time. Digital marketing includes a variety of tools all meant to support your efforts in moving prospects along the sales funnel – blogs, email marketing, social media, search engine optimization, and online advertisements.

Here are a few ways to engage in digital marketing:

• Add a blog to your website and write content frequently.  Write about the challenges community associations or apartments face and how to solve them (such as board meeting efficiency, keeping residents engaged, the impact of drones, and the list can go on).
• Build an email list to send newsletters or company updates to.  If you are providing new services such as in-house maintenance, that’s something worthwhile to share with your audience.
• Create your presence on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  Share your blog articles, company updates, new staff joining, tips, and more.

3) Network and share your expertise at industry events

Networking at events helps you to make connections and build relationships with prospects.  There are many trade associations that operate on a national and state-level such as Community Association Institute (CAI) for HOA’s and condos, and National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) and Institute of Real Estate Management (IREM) for apartments and rentals.  These trade associations provide a multitude of services that empower management companies to succeed. They provide opportunities to attend industry conventions, luncheons, and other events that are great for networking, sharing your knowledge with others, and learning the latest trends.   Other ways management companies can utilize their memberships in trade associations include purchasing a booth or sponsorships, speaking at conventions or teaching classes, or providing expertise at luncheons that laser-focus on an important topic such as emergency preparedness or handling community relationships.

4) Leverage modern technology solutions

Community management software is not often considered a lead generation tool, but from the experience of our clients, I’d argue that it can become a very powerful asset that gives you a competitive edge.  When board members or apartment managers seek a property management service, they are looking for the whole package. If you don’t provide the services they’re looking for due, and if part of that reason is that you’re using an inefficient software platform, your prospect is more likely to go with another property management that uses a more powerful software platform.

Obtaining new sources to generate more quality leads is a very important goal of growing your property management portfolio of community associations and/or apartments.  A combination of these four strategies enables you to not only generate new leads but move them along the sales funnel to becoming a customer and building a sustainable property management business.       

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About Pilera

Pilera Software is the premier community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations.  May we help your community achieve these success stories?  Book a demo to see how Pilera’s community management suite can help your company. 

Implementing a growth strategy to further your apartment, HOA, or condo management business goals is necessary for long-term survival.  According to the Small Business Association, more than 30% of new businesses fail within the first two years and 50% fail within 5 years with only 25% surviving after 15 years.  One of the biggest reasons for this failure has to do with a lack of a proper growth strategy resulting in companies either growing too slowly or too rapidly.  In this post, we provide some strategies that management companies with various client bases can utilize.  When implemented successfully, these strategies can help solidify your management company\’s financial and competitive position, increase profit, expand the customer base, and build an even more credible brand.  With the multitude of benefits a growth strategy can provide, it\’s first important to note that the strategy your company employs will depend upon the company’s goals, internal and financial resources, and the current client base size.  Let’s dive into these 6 growth strategies!

1) Expand your portfolio into different housing markets

Expanding your portfolio to cater to different housing markets is a great way to gain new customers.  Diversifying your business through different markets can also solidify your financial position by reducing the risk that catering to only one client base may often bring.  Management companies can decide to specialize in a number of housing markets including homeowners associations, condo associations, apartment complexes, co-ops, high-rise condos, student housing, senior living, vacation rentals, and more.  After your property management company has gained an optimal level of expertise and is ready for expansion, identify new markets the company can enter for additional growth. For example, a management company that currently caters to homeowners and condominium associations can consider taking their expertise to the high-rise residential market.

2) Expand your services

Another way to gain more customers is by adding new services to your current offerings.  Increasing or enhancing your current service offerings can help your company to improve upon its current skillsets and successfully upsell the service.  Services that you may add can include niche projects that your competitors may not offer. Let us say, for example, many of your prospects and existing customers are struggling with finding the right vendors for their communities.  Through conducting market research, you learn that your competitors do not offer a vendor evaluation/bidding service. This information tells you that by adding a vendor/maintenance management service to your offerings, you can fill an important need in the market, and in turn, you stand to gain new clients and can increase fees for participating clients in the following year.

3) Market to new geographic locations

There are good reasons to take your services to new locations.  Through market research you may find that the current region your management company operates in is saturated, revenue generation doesn’t justify the cost, or another regional market has an unmet need your company can fulfill.  When treading new waters, you’ll need to consider how your prospective clients operate and their pains, state and city regulations, and additional staffing needs.

4) Improve or add amenities

If you manage apartments, rentals, or other high-rise communities, it’s important to think out-of-the-box to implement amenities that can bring value to existing and new residents. The type of amenities you can build for the communities will depend on the demographics of your community.  If your residential communities are comprised of mostly seniors, your amenities should speak to their lifestyle needs – gardens, walking trails, or libraries. If your residential communities are comprised mostly millennials, then consider budgeting for amenities such as gym, sports areas, or educational classes.  It’s also important to consider building amenities that can help bring different demographics together and instill a sense of community. You’ll not only increase the likelihood of gaining more clients but there is also the potential for gaining additional revenue beyond rental fees.

5) Upgrade to a more powerful technology system

A robust technology platform can become a powerful asset to your community or property management company.  It’s not simply because of the efficiency it provides your team; rather, it’s the added value it brings to the services you can deliver to your prospects when they decide to do business with you.  Your prospects look up to your services because they need help with a variety of community operations – resident engagement, customer service, maintenance management, and more tasks. This means that boards and apartment prospects want solid technology tools that will help them achieve their community goals.  Many of Pilera’s management company clients state that it is much easier to promote their services to new prospects and gain more clients because they are using a full suite of management tools that Pilera provides.

6) Acquire new management companies

It often occurs that a management company will purchase another smaller, mid-sized, or large-sized management company.  This is an advanced growth strategy that requires a large capital investment, but can help gain a significant foothold in a new housing market, city, or state, or gain expertise to fill current gaps.

Staying competitive through growth

Growth is essential in the property management industry to remain competitive and to be able to keep delivering great customer service to your HOA, condo, or apartment clients.  Growing through portfolio expansion, new cities, new services, amenities, and technology can deliver great benefits to management companies wanting to increase market share, profit, and fulfill unmet market needs. 

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About Pilera

Pilera Software is the premier community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations.  May we help your community achieve these success stories?  Book a demo to see how Pilera’s community management suite can help your company.