Managing a portfolio of residential properties is hugely rewarding. Growing your business, giving your tenants great places to live and attracting new customers makes for a varied, satisfying lifestyle. In recent years the industry has also seen growth in the number of digital residential property management tools aimed at making your life easier.
But what can this technology do, and how might it help you?
Digitise your residential property management tasks
As your portfolio grows, you’ll begin to realise that managing all your properties using pen and paper, spreadsheets or email isn’t efficient. You’ll spend ever more time doing admin, and less time doing what you’re really passionate about.
Here are just some of the residential property management tasks that can you can handle with a digital tool:
- Addressing new tenant requests: New tenants almost always have specific requests for their property – from getting replacement white goods to painting over small stains. A digital tool can register requests and help you monitor their progress.
- Communicating with tenants: Ever feel overwhelmed by emails, texts and phone calls from your tenants? Many residential property management tools provide a simple online interface where you can file and manage all your customers’ requests.
- Managing rent payments: Digital solutions can send reminder emails about rent and automate several aspects of your bookkeeping. You can even take credit card payments online, rather than getting paid by cheques or bank transfer.
- Scheduled maintenance: Whether it’s carbon monoxide and smoke alarms, replacing kitchen fans or washing windows, digital tools can schedule maintenance and verify the jobs have actually been completed by your contractors.
- Showing people around the property: Digital tools let you manage your diary better, and they can even let you run remote viewings (including the use of VR and digital tours).
- Getting paperwork in order: With digital, you no longer need to print out endless contracts – you can now get these signed digitally with tools like DocuSign.
Real estate software: What tools does your business need?
Keeps you legally protected
Landlords are legally required to conduct a range of regular check-ups. That’s true even if there are no signs of damage or other problems. We all know how easy it is to forget these tasks, and that’s where a rental property management app helps.
So, let’s see how important this can be. Residential property management apps let you schedule test timings in advance for things like fire alarms. For example, if there was a fire and your tenants falsely claimed you had not checked the alarms you could potentially be sued. However, if you use an app like PlanRadar to manage these sorts of tasks, your digital ‘paper trail’ would provide evidence you had done due diligence.
The same goes for issues around damage, leaks or mould in the property. Digital tools which let you store images, record any problems and fixes you have made eventually provide a body of evidence that you have kept up your end of the bargain.
Keep learning: What is a property inspection app?
Digitising residential property management
Residential property management is an exciting, dynamic, and fast-moving profession. As you add more properties to your portfolio, you are going to be managing an ever-wider range of tasks. If your business grows as planned, you’ll then have more tenants to deal with and more problems to solve.
At this point, you have two options. Firstly, you could hire staff or use an estate agent to manage properties for you. This might work, but it means your profits will grow much more slowly, thereby slowing how quickly your portfolio can grow too. The second option is to digitise. By using smart technology, you can streamline many activities involved in residential property management, manage more properties and consequently boost your profits as well.
PlanRadar helps residential property managers significantly speed up their processes. Your business could become more efficient and legally compliant:
- Schedule maintenance and monitor repairs from your mobile
- Complete building inspections to ensure safety and compliance
- Collect evidence of damage and any fixes implemented
See what digital would mean for your residential property business with PlanRadar by starting your free trial today.
