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2021 was a challenging year as managers worked tirelessly on customer retention and safe reopening of offices and community amenities.  As we approach 2022, now is a great time for your HOA management company to set clear goals for the upcoming year.  In this article, we’ll share 4 important goals to help your management company start off the year right.  We also provide some insights on how technology can help achieve your goals.

1) Continue focusing on customer service improvements

The global pandemic has shifted focus back on customer service and how important it is to the success of any business.  Customer service is tied to every aspect of your business from client retention to company growth.  

Did you know that retaining a loyal HOA client is 5 times less expensive than acquiring a new one?  Each client you retain allows you to allocate monetary resources to uplift other aspects of your business that you would have otherwise had to forgo if that client left. The better service you offer to your customers, the more likely they are to renew their contracts which increases your financial bottom line. The ability to deliver strong customer service can also be a differentiator for your company and help you gain new clients.

Now that you understand the critical role that customer service plays in your community management company, how do you prioritize this goal in 2022?   

Being responsive

During the past two years, customer service operations have faced many challenges. Many companies have found it challenging to keep up with the high volume of requests as employees continue working from home or have a hybrid schedule. Customers have also reported longer wait times or having to contact customer support multiple times for the same issue.  Communicating internally with employees and providing an easy way for residents to contact you can help achieve better results. Here\’s what you can do to improve your customer service today:

• Provide a way for residents to get in touch with you and make sure they know what that outlet is, whether it is email, social media, or a resident portal.
• Set expectations on when your team will handle incoming customer requests, whether it is one or two business days.
• Communicate internally with your staff and divide each employee\’s workload adequately. Use customer support software to manage resident requests from start to finish. Assign requests to staff members as they come in so nothing falls through the cracks. Through Pilera\’s resident support management feature, managers can automatically send e-notifications to residents with updates. Each action taken on a customer support ticket is tracked so managers can see what was done.
  

Promote self-service so your customer service is “always-on”

Residents expect to receive instant information about their community as well as “always-on” support.  However, when managers can’t always be there 24×7, a resident portal can serve as the community’s 24×7 information desk.  When updated regularly, a resident portal can be a powerful tool to promote self-service within the community.  Residents can look up their balances and make payments, view documents, learn about upcoming events, contact management, and more.  A portal offers them the convenience of accessing community information on any device or location without needing to call the management office.    

Regularly communicate with your residents

Communication is key for any customer service strategy to succeed.  When frequent and timely, communicating can help establish trust and transparency with your community members.  Things you should communicate with them about include safety issues or emergencies, maintenance, amenity policies, meetings, events, or other issues impacting the community.

2) Increase employee efficiency

Employee efficiency is key to every aspect of your business – employee retention, operations, customer service, and increasing revenue.  When employees are productive as a team, it improves the work environment, leading to less churn.  Many companies nationwide, including community management companies, are experiencing a rise in employee churn.  This puts a lot of strain on current employees as they scramble to take on the tasks of those who left.  This can result in employees becoming overwhelmed. Churn also strains the company\’s financial resources because hiring and onboarding a new employee costs much more than retaining an existing one.

But that\’s not all. Happier employees means happier customers. One of the most important reasons to invest in employee efficiency is that there\’s a direct correlation between increased employee productivity and customer satisfaction. Employees who find value and meaning in their work are more likely to stay and increase their productivity, and this results in more satisfied customers.

Now that you understand the impact of employee efficiency on your business, how can you achieve this goal in 2022? The key is to give your employees the processes and tools to help them work smarter, not harder.

Improve internal communications

According to Firstup, 86% of corporate employees state that poor internal communication leads to failures in the workplace.  It\’s important to regularly communicate with your employees, whether it be through virtual meetings, chat, or email. Check in with your community managers and staff regularly on tasks they’re working on, have completed, and any issues they need help to resolve.  Encourage two-way communication so that your employees are comfortable sharing their concerns and solutions.

Encourage your employees to get accredited

Industry certifications empower managers to be better equipped in handling various responsibilities for the communities they manage. When managers have the tools and resources to do their job, they’ll be more efficient and knowledgeable.  Consider encouraging your employees to partake in Community Association Institute (CAI)’s CMCA, AMS, and PCAM courses for the community association industry.

Susan Hoffman, Managing Director of Professional Association Services, Inc. in California, says that education is one of her company\’s most important goals.  “We’re pursuing that through Community Association Institute and the minimum certification is the CMCA and about half of our managers are credentialed that way.  We have a couple of people that have other credentials from other organizations.  But we’re on a trajectory to get everybody certified and credentialed so that we have a lot more depth and experience.  I’m a big proponent of education in the industry.  I was a facilitator for the CAI for a number of years and it’s very important to me that managers are educated and they at least understand the framework and they know where to go or what resources to get when they need help with something.”

The right technology can help employees get work done smarter

Technology has become core to a company’s operations.  However, employees may feel overwhelmed with the vast amounts of information and technology they are expected to deal with.  In fact, RingCentral\’s report states that 69% of employees lose 32 days a year toggling between multiple apps. Imagine having to log into separate applications to keep track of your tasks, communicate with your residents, upload community documents, work on maintenance requests, issue violations, or approve architectural requests.  Thankfully, there are software solutions available that bring a community manager’s most vital tasks together.

Community management software such as Pilera’s enables your organization to streamline important tasks like communications, maintenance, customer service, online payments, and resident engagement.  Multiple people in your organization can log into one platform and get visibility into each other’s tasks.  This allows your staff to work together and smarter without constantly needing to ask for updates.  For example, these key features in Pilera help increase employee efficiency:

• Automated email notifications when tickets are created and assigned keep the right people informed.
• Analytics reports give insights into which communities are creating the most amount of work, or which employees are overwhelmed.
• Dashboards show managers at a glance the tickets that are assigned to them by prioritiy, urgency, or age, so they can plan out their day accordingly.    

3) Increase Revenue Streams

As many management companies focused on safe reopening and client retention in 2021, revenue goals remained on the backburner.  In 2022, consider how you can take incremental steps toward the revenue goals you want to pursue.  

When you increase revenue, you can improve profitability.  Focusing on revenue growth enables your management company to gain more clients, grow your internal team, and offer better service.  

You can combine one or more of the following growth strategies with your current offerings to improve profitability and reduce risk to your company.  

Offer new services

One way to position your company for growth is to offer new complementary services to your existing clients for an additional cost.  A great example is building an in-house maintenance team to offer home maintenance and improvement services to your residents.  

Offer your existing services to an untapped market

A study by Bain & Company showed that businesses that moved into an adjacent market saw the most profitable growth.  For example, if your company exclusively services single-family homes, you may consider aligning your services to condominiums, high-rise or luxury condos, or even apartments.      

Expand geographically

Many management companies operate within a specific city or multiple neighboring cities.  One way to improve your company’s growth is to expand into an adjacent regional location.  As you come up with your expansion plans, it’s important to evaluate the following:

1. Existing regulations that your company will need to comply with in the region you\’re interested in entering. 
2. How similar or different are the needs of communities in this new potenial city/state as compared to where you are currently operating?
3. How easily can you adapt your business model to meet potential clients’ needs or succeed in the business environment?
4. Existing competitor offerings – What can you offer that’s unique and isn’t offered by local competitors?  
5. Business relationships that you can create in the area to solidify your offerings such as availability of high quality contractors.

Whichever growth strategy you opt for, community management technology can help you scale.  Pilera’s community management feature is an enterprise solution that makes it simple for managers to handle any type of community in their portfolio.  Features such as unlimited staff users, cross-community search and dashboards, reports, and user roles all help to organize work, increase efficiency, and improve security as you grow your portfolio.  

4) Reduce Costs

Driving costs down is crucial to improving your company’s growth.  However, the challenge is to not compromise your company’s core values or the quality of the customer service you provide.  Here are two major ways you can reduce costs:

Invest in community management software

Using the right software can help save money while automating many mundane tasks for your business.  Pilera’s community management software helps you centralize vital community tasks such as communications, maintenance, customer service, document management, payment processing, event management, and much more in one place.  Community management software reduces costs in many ways, here are just a few of them:

A) Reduce paper mailings

Automating phone, email, and text messages to notify residents can save thousands of dollars per year in paper mailings.  Even sending electronic notices for maintenance, rule violations, ACRs, events, and documents through Pilera pay for itself. 

B) Eliminate paperwork

Previously, managers would keep track of work orders, tasks, and resident data through handwritten notes.  Switching to a community management platform like Pilera helps you declutter your office space and track tasks more easily.

C) Reduce hidden expenses

When you reduce time, you save money!  A hidden expense such as an hour-long phone call with a resident that could have been resolved through a self-help portal is one such expense that many companies overlook.  Technology can offload many tasks like communicating to your entire portfolio, notifying vendors, or providing a 24×7 help desk to residents. 

Help your communities to reduce cost

In addition to helping your communities manage operations, it\’s also important to help them save money. When you help your clients save money, you can save money too.  Here are some ways to help your communities reduce costs:

A) Budget planning and monitoring

By this time, your communities will have already prepared their budgets for the upcoming year.  However, it’s important to have a working budget the community can use to monitor income and expenses in real-time. 

B) Preventative maintenance

Preventative maintenance is the action of regularly monitoring the condition of your community’s equipment and identifying issues early before it escalates into an emergency situation.  While it reduces equipment replacement costs for your communities, it saves your staff time from unexpectedly having to go on-site to assess the situation.  Many Pilera clients handle preventative maintenance by creating work orders, setting a due date and priority, and then assigning them to vendors or staff.

C) Reserves study

It’s vital that HOA’s conduct a reserves study to identify all the equipment in their communities and when they need to be repaired or completely replaced.  This study helps the Board to identify how well prepared they are financially to take care of these repairs or replacements. 

Summary of HOA management goals you should focus on in 2022

Set goals early for 2022 so that your management company can take action toward those goals and monitor them regularly. To take your company forward, focus on these four important goals:

1. Improve customer service – Ingrain customer service in every part of your business. Respond to residents in a timely manner, promote self-service within the community, and communicate regularly with them. With the right technology, you can provide residents with a 24×7 information desk and make it easier for them to contact you with questions.
   
2. Increase employee efficiency – Create processes and give your employees the tools to help them work smarter and be more productive. Improve internal communications with regular check ins to make sure your employees feel valued and get the assistance they need. Encourage employees to get accredited in community management so they can solve everyday challenges more easily. Finally, provide employees with a tool that centalizes all of their important tasks. Community management software platforms consolidate all important tasks in one place.
   
3. Increase revenue – To generate additional income, consider providing new complementary services to your existing clientele, serving a new market, or expanding to a new geographic location. Community management software such as Pilera\’s helps you scale no matter which avenue you choose.
   
4. Reduce costs – Manage your costs more effectively without compromising on quality is something that many businesses struggle with. Start by helping your clients save money and investing in community management software to automate everyday tasks.

The success of an HOA community relies on elected board members and their appointed management company to work together in carrying out decisions that are in the best interest of residents – from facilitating their use of community resources to maintaining or increasing their property values.  Oftentimes, in performing these duties, community managers and board members find themselves conflicted on matters concerning community operations. Disagreements may occur on the allocation of costs, vendor preferences, or any tasks to be completed. These conflicts can lead to tussles and distrust between the board and management, and ultimately, a decline in resident satisfaction.  However, ensuring a strong line of communication at each stage can help board members and management make huge strides in building trust and achieving shared goals. 

1) Create clear operating policies

When a management company onboards a new community, the first matter of business should be to draft an operations policy. The operations policy should support how managers and the board will handle rules set in the governing documents. The operations policy should state how important responsibilities such as owner correspondence, vendor bid solicitation, maintenance inspections, violations, board meetings, and other important projects will be handled. Here are other important considerations to include in the operations policy:

• Start out by listing the goals that the community wants to achieve.
• Instructions for each type of task or project to achieve the above goals.
• State whether a particular task falls under a board member’s responsibility or the community manager’s. Be sure to include the title (treasurer, community management, company executive, etc).
• Set the board member or community manager’s expectations and proper behavior for different types of tasks.
• Determine measures of success for each operational task and how that information will be collected and reported.
• Standard timeline for different operating activities.

2) Communicate, communicate, communicate!

The best way for the assigned community manager and the board member to stay on the same page is to communicate. Board members should communicate any shared decisions they make so that the community manager can have ample time to act upon it. Community managers, in turn, should always keep their board members informed of the status or any delays they encounter. Board members and managers should communicate via electronic means, whether it be a community management system or email. Any other action items or decisions made should be documented appropriately and distributed to the relevant parties.

3) Conduct focused management-board meetings

A common complaint about management-board meetings is that it is often lengthy and conducted without properly defined goals. Prior to any meeting, management should delegate one staff member to work with a board member to develop and distribute an agenda. Managers and board members should stick to this agenda to facilitate a productive, streamlined meeting. In the agenda, it’s important to include a brief overview of the last meeting minutes, projects/tasks worked on, achievements, challenges, and other items needed to be discussed. Prior to the meeting, managers should compile a list of the projects they are working on to improve community enjoyment for the residents. They should also compile a list of operational tasks such as work orders, support questions, tasks, violations, and architecture change requests that have been created, closed, and are still open.

4) Use a modern tracking system

Board members and community managers need a way to digitize all the information they are working with on a daily basis as well as a way to store their back and forth communication. A modern tracking system that allows for efficient record-keeping and robust communication between managers, board members, and residents can help streamline community operations. Here are some ways in which a tracking system such as Pilera can help align management and board member goals:

• Store documents such as meeting minutes in a document management system.
• Create a variety of tickets such as work orders, activity logs, tasks, violations, and architecture change requests from any device or location.
• Display the workload of staff members so that managers can assign tickets appropriately.
• Managers and board members can collaborate on tasks and architecture change requests and notify one another of the progress.
• Generate reports to display during community board meetings or management-board meetings.
• Notify residents of work orders completed or ACR’s approved.

Together, clearly defined policies, constant communication, focused meetings, and a way to digitize and track critical information can help HOA community managers and board members ensure that their goals are aligned and on-track.  Frequent communication can help significantly build trust and reduce friction between board members and management so they can improve the quality of living in the community.

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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.

There’s a lot to be said for facilitating interaction between your residents. They could find in each other good business contact, a new babysitter, someone to lean on in hard times, or even a lifelong friend. Residents will indeed run into each other in the parking lot or the mailroom, but there’s a lot an HOA can do to create opportunities for residents to socialize in a relaxed environment.

Food and Fun

No one can resist free food! Host an inexpensive ice cream social and provide guests with a few flavors of ice cream and all the fixin’s. Or plan a potluck and invite residents to bring a favorite dish to share.

Out with the Old

A community-wide garage sale is a great way to help residents de-clutter and spend a little time together. Choose a date, map out a spot, and secure a few volunteers to help on the day of the sale. What could be simpler?

Community Garden

Condo living doesn’t allow for much gardening room, but if you stake out a plot of land and divide it up for residents, they’ll be able to grow a few tomatoes or favorite flowers and get to know each other in the process!

None of these ideas should be expensive to the HOA. Invitations, fliers, and maybe a few more landscaping dollars for the garden idea is all the commitment you need to make. And all of them can go a long way toward giving residents a happier place to live. Encourage everyone to get out and get to know each other!

Pilera is a best-of-class, easy-to-use, comprehensive online property management solution for apartments, condos, and associations. Pilera provides the easiest, most comprehensive data management capability available to property managers, leasing agents, boards of directors, and back-office personnel. Quickly and easily access whatever you need, whenever you need it, from wherever you need to be with office or mobile phone connectivity. You are never out of touch. Act on the document/information accessed from the office or “on-the-road” with Pilera-supported mobile capability. Contact us today!

 

One of the reasons people cite for purchasing a condo is its location. Maybe it has an incredible view. Maybe it’s within walking distance of the city’s best restaurants. Maybe the owner thinks others will appreciate those aspects of his condo, as well.

Vacation season is here and house swapping sites are gaining popularity. You might find some condo owners in your property are looking to take part in the trend. Short-term rentals are a mixed bag. A condo owner might find the perfect family to move in for a week or two and then they’d leave with no disruption. What’s the harm, right? On the other hand, a condo owner might bring in a constantly rotating cast of renters who use their vacation spot to blare loud music and disrupt the neighborhood.

Most HOAs lay out rules about how many units in their property can be rental properties at one time — and that’s for leases that last at least a year. There also should be rules about short-term rentals that either restrict or ban the process to keep disruption to full-time neighbors at a minimum.

To prevent condo owners from pleading ignorance, now is a good time to remind condo owners about your HOA’s rental rules as the summer starts to heat up. There’s no harm in a gentle reminder before the travel bug bites.

Pilera is a best-of-class, easy-to-use, comprehensive online property management solution for apartments, condos, and associations. Pilera provides the easiest, most comprehensive data management capability available to property managers, leasing agents, boards of directors, and back-office personnel. Quickly and easily access whatever you need, whenever you need it, from wherever you need to be with office or mobile phone connectivity. You are never out of touch. Act on the document/information accessed from the office or “on-the-road” with Pilera-supported mobile capability. Contact us today!

The housing needs and desires of 30-somethings are driving a new trend in condos — micro units. Micro units are typically smaller than 400 square feet and imaginatively use space so that not even an inch is wasted.

Millennials don’t have quite as much stuff as generations before them. They don’t need entire walls to hold their book or record collections because they’re stored in hand-held devices. Capsule wardrobes, which consist of just a few mixable pieces, are all the rage. And today, options to rent everything short-term — from clothing to cars — make it easy for people who don’t want to own anything to not own much at all.

This emphasis on minimalism coupled with Millennials’ desire to sacrifice space for location, and the trend toward people living alone rather than with a roommate, is driving a building boom of micro-units in many major cities. Many developers who build them say that with very little advertising, they typically have a waitlist.

Micro units are an elegant solution to the lack of affordable housing in major cities. And environmentalists say that increasing population density reduces per-person pollution rates, another thing that makes environmentally conscious Millennials happy.

But living in a micro-unit isn’t for everyone. It isn’t a matter of figuring out how to cram every single belonging into 300 square feet. It’s much more of a lifestyle choice to own less, be in the world more, and use the entire neighborhood as living space.

Pilera is a best-of-class, easy-to-use, comprehensive online property management solution for apartments, condos, and associations. Pilera provides the easiest, most comprehensive data management capability available to property managers, leasing agents, boards of directors, and back-office personnel. Quickly and easily access whatever you need, whenever you need it, from wherever you need to be with office or mobile phone connectivity. You are never out of touch. Act on the document/information accessed from the office or “on-the-road” with Pilera-supported mobile capability. Contact us today!

 

Tax time is looming, and although most condo associations likely have already finished or are deep into planning, now is a good time to think about next year. Filing with the IRS is required, even if the homeowners association hasn’t made any money, but the way you file can generate significant savings. Read on to learn about the different ways to file and the benefits of each.

1120-H

This is the simplest form to file as a homeowners association and is best for those associations that don’t generate much taxable income. The main drawback of this type of filing is the flat 30% tax rate. To file this form, 85% of the building’s units must be residential, 90% of the association’s expenses must be for property maintenance, and 60% of the association’s income must be from exempt function income, like membership dues or real estate taxes.

Corporate Filing

This method of filing is more flexible with expense allocation and has lower tax rates, but calculations can be complex. If your association charges a lot of non-exempt fees, like club dues to non-residents or charges for rented units, this is a good option.

Non-Profit Filing

Non-profit filing is the least frequently used method, simply because it isn’t easy to get non-profit status. There’s a lot of paperwork and research involved, and close attention has to be paid to bylaws to make sure they are worded correctly. If your association owns and maintains the property that the public can use, like a beach, road, or park, non-profit status can be granted.

Talk to your accountant about which scenario works best for your property. Different circumstances might require different types of filing, and circumstances can change every year.

Pilera is a best-of-class, easy-to-use, comprehensive online community management solution for apartments, condos, and associations. Pilera provides the easiest, most comprehensive data management capability available to property managers, leasing agents, boards of directors, and back-office personnel. Quickly and easily access whatever you need, whenever you need it, from wherever you need to be with office or mobile phone connectivity. You are never out of touch. Act on the document/information accessed from the office or “on-the-road” with Pilera-supported mobile capability.  Contact us today!

You may remember last year we shared a blog post, “A Condo HOA Versus Old Glory,” in which we detailed a contentious battle between a condo owner in Jacksonville, Florida, and the HOA who told him he was disallowed from displaying a small American flag in a flower pot outside his condo.

It’s hard to say why these things tend to keep happening in Jacksonville, but a similar struggle is underway at another condo complex, where a woman is being told to remove the Stars and Stripes from her sixth-floor balcony.

Once again, the condo association is claiming that it violates the rule against hanging banners in common areas, which is a very common by-law of most associations, both for safety and aesthetic reasons.

While the previous scenario was being handled strictly by the courts, this one is turning ugly in the real world. There’s video footage of a teenager attempting to destroy the flag. The police have been called to the complex over the issue 11 times so far, and the woman has been receiving anti-Semitic messages on her doorstep.

The condo association insists that while the other residents are “fed up” with the flag, their only point of contention with it is the placement. An attorney for the HOA has submitted paperwork demanding that the flag be removed by today.

What do you think? HOAs have every right to enforce their rules when it comes to decorations and their placement, but if it’s not a safety issue, should the American flag get a pass?

Pilera is a best-of-class, easy-to-use, comprehensive online property management solution for apartments, condos, and associations. Pilera provides the easiest, most comprehensive data management capability available to property managers, leasing agents, boards of directors, and back-office personnel. Quickly and easily access whatever you need, whenever you need it, from wherever you need to be with office or mobile phone connectivity. You are never out of touch. Act on the document/information accessed from the office or “on-the-road” with Pilera-supported mobile capability. Contact us today!

On March 14, the CAI is holding its annual conference in Plantsville, Conn. The theme this year is Planning for a Healthy Community.

This expo is an easy drive away for any homeowners association member in New England and provides an excellent opportunity for association members to network with each other, share best practices, and prepare for any changes that 2015 will bring.

In addition to the benefits that come from speaking with colleagues, the expo will hold several educational sessions throughout the day. The first will teach you how to communicate bad news to residents. Is your building aging and in need of some maintenance? Did you discover a construction flaw? This session will teach you how to talk about it.

The second will teach you how to plan and manage maintenance projects. The third will discuss managing budgets and communicating effectively with residents. The fourth discussing long-term planning, such as deciding whether to fix or replace a piece of your property. It also will bring up insurance questions that will help you determine if you’re adequately covered.

The final session will match small groups with a condo association expert of their choice, where the groups can bring up questions and brainstorm new ways to approach difficult problems. This session is followed by a Q&A with a panel of insurance and legal experts.

No one likes working on the weekends, but spending a Saturday with colleagues and experts will help you make 2015 the best year yet for your association.

Pilera is a best-of-class, easy-to-use, comprehensive online property management solution for apartments, condos, and associations. Pilera provides the easiest, most comprehensive data management capability available to property managers, leasing agents, boards of directors, and back-office personnel. Quickly and easily access whatever you need, whenever you need it, from wherever you need to be with office or mobile phone connectivity. You are never out of touch. Act on the document/information accessed from the office or “on-the-road” with Pilera-supported mobile capability. Contact us today!

Does your board make new year’s resolutions for itself? If not, 2015 could be the year to do so! Sure, you could simply call these “Annual Goals,” but they’re a little more fun to create and stick to under a different name, and if you come up with good ones, they could forever change the way your board operates. Below are some suggestions to consider.

Take a look at your community website and newsletter. Does the content or design need a facelift? Give your communications strategy a fresh look this year.

If you hold meetings without an agenda, 2015 is the year to create a formal one for each of your meetings. If you do create agendas, but ignore them once the meeting starts, now is the time to kick that bad habit. Agendas keep meetings efficient and on-task, and make attendees feel like their time is respected.

Do you have a formal maintenance plan for the equipment on your property or is your association more go-with-the-flow? Having a formal maintenance plan on paper is important. It should list all of your equipment, their most recent service date, and their next planned service date. It should also include names and numbers of the people who perform the maintenance and what they charge.

Create a good budget for 2015. Then create realistic goals that fit your budget. Make sure you have enough reserves that you can avoid special assessments.

We hope that the new year brings good things to you and the community you serve. Happy 2015!

Pilera is a best-of-class, easy-to-use, comprehensive online property management solution for apartments, condos, and associations. Pilera provides the easiest, most comprehensive data management capability available to property managers, leasing agents, boards of directors, and back-office personnel. Quickly and easily access whatever you need, whenever you need it, from wherever you need to be with office or mobile phone connectivity. You are never out of touch. Act on the document/information accessed from the office or “on-the-road” with Pilera-supported mobile capability. Contact us today!

 

Condos that market themselves as family-friendly should have a few things in common: good insulation, tile floors, and no one screaming, “Get off my lawn!” Some family-friendly buildings also boast indoor pools and a common room with shared toys. But according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, some luxury condo buildings go even further to attract toddlers and the grown-ups who love them.

Luxury condos are beginning to offer classes, like art, tumbling, and baby yoga, to their littlest tenants. This amenity allows parents and caregivers to simply hop on an elevator to get a little enrichment. Less time spent carting kids from one activity to the next means more family time and better scheduled lives for parents.

You don\’t have to be a luxury condo building to offer an amenity like this, however. If you have a common space and lots of littles in the building, there\’s no reason not to host a weekly music class or even just a story hour run by volunteers. It\’ll go a long way toward convincing potential family buyers who are on the fence about moving in to take the plunge.

Pilera is a best-of-class, easy-to-use, comprehensive online property management solution for apartments, condos, and associations. Pilera provides the easiest, most comprehensive data management capability available to property managers, leasing agents, boards of directors, and back-office personnel. Quickly and easily access whatever you need, whenever you need it, from wherever you need to be with office or mobile phone connectivity. You are never out of touch. Act on the document/information accessed from the office or “on-the-road” with Pilera-supported mobile capability. Contact us today!