Tag: Property Managers

Multi-Family Housing Trends for Property Managers

Multi-Family Housing Trends for Property Managers
Multi-Family Housing Trends for Property Managers

For today’s renters, the appeal of apartments and condos heavily centers around amenities. As a property manager, you are probably either thinking about what features you can feasibly and affordably add, or you are attempting to compete with a flashy new property in town.

Multi-family housing trends continue to focus on urban lifestyles and luxury amenities. An Avalon property in New Jersey, for example, has added a “bike spa” for storage and repairs.

Attracting today’s Millennial renters and charging higher rents can be accomplished by offering luxury services as well as improving the community feeling through better common areas.

Adapting for 2017 Housing Trends

Property managers have several options for improving the tenant experience, even without a major remodeling. Instead of building new features, many apartments and condos are partnering with nearby businesses like gyms, salons, and even chef schools to offer tenants high-end services and recreation.

Lowering operating costs are also part of the equation. If you can cut energy bills or reduce maintenance staff with automation, you might be able to afford a flashy new amenity.

To that end, property managers are adding tools like “smart” lockers that accept packages and send text alerts to the tenant. A property manager might add a dumpster mover or powered equipment cart to reduce the physical demands of garbage disposal and other daily tasks.

A dumpster mover can help your employees accomplish more, which can lead to benefits like faster maintenance ticket response times and cleaner common areas that boost tenant satisfaction. If your multi-family building needs solutions for more efficient management, check out our WasteCaddy and other dumpster mover solutions.

Property Manager Entrepreneur Creates Noise Alert Application that Generates Millions

Innovations that Help Property Managers
Innovations that Help Property Managers

Like many great entrepreneurs, John Bialk started a company with an idea that solves a problem: tenants’ noise complaints to property managers.

Bialk lamented the feeling of “waiting for bad things to happen.” His idea was to create a device and an app to alert property management when noise gets out of hand — so management can proactively respond and situations and have data that tells the facts.

Money Magazine recently profiled Bialk and his new business, Quietyme. After partnering up with a computer programmer and quitting his day job in 2013, Bialk has turned his idea into a company worth millions.

Property managers (as well as those in hospitality and healthcare) are loving the features of Quietyme. Small devices collect data about noise, temperature, humidity, and light. When the software detects something that might indicate a problem, management gets an alert on the mobile app.

When a tenant starts partying loudly at 1 a.m., the Quietyme app knows it even before another tenant complaints. Broken air conditioner? The device will know that something is wrong.

The Power of a Simple Solution

Bialk’s story shows that great ideas can provide massive value to other businesses — especially in the form of solutions that make common problems easier to manage.

That’s also the idea behind our dumpster moving tugs. Rental properties, warehouses and other facilities often need to move heavy dumpsters across lots, up and down ramps, and through parking garages. Dumpster moving tugs help automate the process, reducing physical injuries to employees and making facilities management a cleaner, smoother process.

For more info on dumpster movers that all property managers need for smooth site management and other powered carts, visit DJProduct.com.

Property Managers Cut the Fluff to Get Bottom-line Results

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Property Managers are Taking Action

Out of lean economic times has grown a new era of lean management for both residential and commercial property managers. Although occupancy and rent collection have the greatest impact on revenue, reducing expenses has become the new market trend that drives profitability.

According to the Nevada Business Journal, some commercial property manager tips for improving the bottom line include:

  • Maintain service quality for issues that directly impact tenants, while trimming expenses behind the scenes.
  • Provide value without adding to costs by connecting tenants with outside services for things like tax assistance and financial services.
  • Be transparent with commercial tenants and open a dialog about operating expenses to get a clear picture of which services are providing real value.

For residential, we have property manager tips that reduce costs while pleasing tenants in a very competitive market:

  • Work with HOA clients to maximize the amount of upkeep required of homeowners while still providing a high level of service.
  • Make reasonable investments in new technology to automate and streamline operations including janitorial, trash collection, and landscaping.
  • Use online systems for applications and rent payments to minimize office labor.

Property management still boils down to getting the basics right — down to details like making sure the garbage gets collected. On that front, property managers have automated technology available such as dumpster movers that reduce the required staff from three or four people down to just one employee.

When you want to “do more with less,” you need the right tools. For information about waste bin movers and other motorized systems, visit DJProducts.com — and follow our blog for property manager tips.

Mobility Matters to Today’s Hospitality Property Managers

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Use technology to keep up to date with your staff.

Mobile technology has already changed the property management world by changing the way customers find and book a room. Now we are seeing the hospitality adopt smartphone and tablet apps for employee use, changing the way everyone from housekeeping to managers does their jobs.

Starfleet Media’s 2015 edition of the Smart Decision Guide to Hotel Property Management Systems explains how mobility solutions are quickly becoming part of the new norm.

Mobile platforms help hotel employees with productivity and response times:

  • Housekeeping receives instant alerts when a room should be cleaned
  • Front desk staff receive text-based messages when a guest makes a request
  • Maintenance receives and submits work orders, complete with notes and digital photos
  • Data and information can be seamlessly integrated from mobile applications to the property management system, producing trackable data for analysis and monitoring

In other words, mobile access not only helps workers communicate with each other and guests in real-time, it also accelerates the way hoteliers can compile and analyze data. One hub, accessible to any employee, with fewer phone calls and less paperwork to slow things down.

Hospitality industry equipment and the latest software work together to increase productivity and reduce costs. Think of a housekeeping employee using a motorized linen cart equipped with a mobile tablet. The worker quickly moves from room to room based on check-out alerts, instead of manually pushing a cart and knocking on every door.

Equip your staff with the latest technology. View the full report from Starfleet to read about the latest trends, and explore your options for motorized housekeeping carts and other hospitality industry equipment from DJ Products.