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Property Management

How Resident Satisfaction Impacts Net Operating Income

Have you considered the role your maintenance process plays? Of the various approaches to maximizing net operating income (NOI) for a rental property, improving resident satisfaction is often overlooked. This is largely because it feels like a qualitative measure when compared to other more historically quantifiable expenses that directly impact the bottom line. This is also precisely why improving resident satisfaction may be the key to improving your NOI. First, let’s talk key performance indicators. More specifically, let’s talkleading versus lagging indicators. Leading indicators tell us what will happen; lagging indicators tell us what has already happened. Both are essential in managing any investment. Most of us tend to focus on lagging indicators, often because they’re more readily identifiable and available. However, both leading and lagging indicators are essential in predicting and verifying quality of outcomes. Another important distinction to consider is that an indicator can be both a leading indicator in one context, and a lagging indicator in another. Such is the case with resident satisfaction. One way to maximize NOI is to minimize resident turnover. The reason has as much to do with transaction cost, as anything. Put simply, regardless of length of residency, when a resident decides not to renew a lease, a number of tasks must be completed before the next renter moves in: move-out inspections, deposit disputes, turnover repairs and cleaning, marketing the property, showing and leasing the property, move-in inspection and others. These tasks create costs for the property’s owner and to the property manager. One key factor in minimizing turnover is resident satisfaction. It stands to reason that residents who are satisfied with the quality of their home are less likely to move. Controlling the Controllable A variety of factors affect leasing churn. Property managers have control over some of them (e.g., rent price and overall experience). Other factors, such as job loss or transfer, are outside the property manager’s scope of influence. In any business, the higher the cost of customer acquisition, the greater the impact on the bottom line. Any business owner will tell you it costs far less to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one. A resident’s maintenance experience can have a meaningful impact on their decision to renew their lease—nearly a third of nonrenewals list lackluster maintenance as one of the primary drivers for not signing a renewal. Data Helps Residents’ maintenance experience comes down to two core needs: speed and transparency (in that order). Data is available to help identify some of the common elements of a happy resident. One of those is the speed of a repair. When you ask someone in the industry what defines an excellent maintenance experience, you might hear phrases like “personal touch” or a “human experience.” Data tells a different story. Residents weigh speed heavily on the repair, and the data confirms just that. Here is some broad guidance based on statistical information: HVAC repairs should be completed in less than three days. Plumbing repairs should be completed in less than 4.5 days. Electrical repairs should be completed in less than five days. If your repair times start stretching beyond that, the statistical likelihood of a happy resident falls drastically. How to Control the Outcome Property management is seeing some of the most impressive growth of any industry and demonstrating incredible resiliency. Much like other rapidly growing sectors, there are learning opportunities. Among these is clarifying the most relevant key performance indicators (KPIs), specifically those that correlate with lease renewals. Among these are two that, at a minimum, you should monitor closely: Speed of repair measures the time from the submission of the repair request to the time the repair is complete. Some firms track the entire length of time a work order is open (to include time waiting on an invoice). This muddies the waters a bit and makes the indicator less useful for gauging resident satisfaction. Practically speaking, there are reasons to also measure the time a work order is submitted until it is closed at receipt of an invoice. This is a different KPI and more useful in gauging the cashflow cycle impact and process flow with the billing department. It will not predict resident satisfaction. Tracking time to completion from a resident perspective can help the property manager better understand its impact on resident satisfaction. Standardizing the methodology to exclusively measure time of repair will also help you benchmark your operation against others more effectively. Resident satisfaction is the average satisfaction score residents provide, based on maintenance activities. Once again, measurement methodology is critical. If you allow this KPI to become a marketing exercise, wherein the system is gamed to ensure the highest score, you’ve already lost. You want to understand your actual resident satisfaction, not your opinion of your resident satisfaction. A good KPI sets the standard. The goal is not to adjust the KPI to meet your standards. The goal is to adjust your processes and thereby raise your standards to meet those set by the KPI. Resident satisfaction should be checked within 24 hours of the repair completion and must be requested for all repairs. If you pollute your measurements with subjectivity, omitting repairs that may mess up your data, the KPI is meaningless. Automating this process prevents subjectivity from creeping into the process. Automating this process gives you consistency. Consistency gives you an honest score. Both metrics are critical for creating a measurement process that includes both leading and lagging indicators. In terms of the repair itself, speed of repair is the leading indicator, and is verified by resident satisfaction as the lagging indicator (note that resident satisfaction also acts as a leading indicator in predicting resident turnover). If your team has visibility into repairs lasting more than five days, they have an opportunity to improve processes (control their controllables) to reduce these repair times, which improves the likelihood of a renewed lease. Viewed through this lens, maintenance is much less the “set it and forget it” process of

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Keep Showing Properties, Just Don’t Be There

Virtual tools expand your opportunities for showing properties. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? That’s a question to debate with your friends during a virtual happy hour. For now, let’s dive deep into a similar philosophical question about your leasing process: If a prospective tenant views a rental when no one is showing them around, did a showing occur? The answer is a resounding YES! Self-showings have increased in popularity over the years as the cost has gone down and the security measures have gone up. During our current period of government-mandated lockdowns and the need to be socially distant, self-showings are now more important than ever to ensure you can still “show” your rentals while reducing the risk of getting or spreading infectious diseases like the coronavirus. Self-showings started with key checkouts decades ago. When a prospective tenant would come to your office, you would collect a $20 “deposit” and potentially make a copy of their driver’s license. And though this process kept your team at the office instead of driving around town dealing with no-shows, showings were still limited to your office hours, which meant you missed some prime showing opportunities. Today, we know that 38% of self-showings occur after hours and on weekends. In fact, 19% of self-showings occur on Saturday and 10.5% occur on Sunday. So, if you’re not showing units on the weekend, you’re missing out on nearly a third of potential showings. Electronic Lockboxes and Locks There was little improvement to the self-show process until electronic lockboxes came on the scene at the turn of the century. Electronic lockboxes were first made available to realtors and then to trusted contractors.  Now they are available even to vetted prospective tenants. The next hurdle was finding a quick and cost-effective way to vet prospective tenants in order to make self-showings viable. Property managers have found that solution in automated scheduling software. Prospective tenants can schedule self-showings to view your vacant rentals after they have provided verifiable contact information, been qualified against your leasing restrictions (e.g., pet policy, income requirements, etc.) and provided a copy of their government-issued ID. All access is monitored, and you are notified each time an authorized person arrives at your rental and requests an access code. Only those who have been prequalified or preapproved for entry into your rental are given a unique access code that can be used only one time, on the day for which it was generated. One of the benefits of electronic lockboxes is they can move from vacant home to vacant home and always be in use as rentals hit the market. One downside is they leave your homes after the vacancy has been filled. So new, keyless access solutions have emerged that are installed on the home and facilitate self-showings but remain as a long-term access solution for tenants and staff to easily access your rentals without having to worry about being locked out or having to come to the office to pick up a key. Plus, access on locks connected to smart home hubs can continue to be tracked under all scenarios: the tenant, their dog walker, a plumber, a property manager, etc. Through this period of social distancing, consider deploying a mix of smart locks and electronic lockboxes. For the units you own and manage, install smart locks backed by smart home hubs. Though there is a higher upfront cost, the long-term benefits of facilitating and monitoring access makes it worth it in the end. Plus, smart home technology allows for expansion of services like hot water heater sensors, window sensors and thermostats. For units you manage but you can’t get the owner on board to pay for the smart home technology, consider deploying electronic lockboxes to allow for secure self-access during the turn process. Vendors like painters, cleaners and handymen could get unique one-time codes each time they need to access the rental to get it rent-ready. Then prospective tenants can be vetted and given one-time use codes so they can view the property on their own. Once the property is leased, the lockbox would be used on move-in day, and the new tenant would keep the key. Finally, a staff member would pick up the lockbox to be moved to the next vacancy. This is contactless leasing that keeps everyone safe. Be Prepared If that all sounds too daunting or expensive, you can also use scheduling software with your existing contractor lockboxes or to schedule video conference showings using FaceTime, Google Hangouts, Skype or Zoom. Prospective tenants are still vetted, but instead of getting a unique one-time use code, they receive a static code or instructions on how to do a video conference. Using contractor lockboxes is not as secure as using electronic locks and lockboxes, and doing video conferencing would still require a team member to travel to the rental to virtually walk the prospective tenant around the property. But this approach does allow you to show your rentals without risk of infection. Regardless of how you approach leasing during a pandemic, just know that there will be fewer leads and fewer inperson showings, which means fewer opportunities to sign a lease. If you want to keep your rentals turning over as quickly as possible, have a plan for showing properties without any human interaction. Make sure you’re not trading one problem for another, so don’t skimp on security and just leave the backdoor unlocked (yes, we’ve really heard this from property managers!). Instead, kill two birds with one stone. Use technology to allow secure self-showings that ensure social distancing and that can accelerate your leasing process.

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Hands-On Property Management in the Pandemic Era

Many tenants are poised to adapt to a property management inspection model that is safer, more effective and resilient to social distancing restrictions. Modern innovations like grocery store self-checkout, online retail shopping and webinar conferences weren’t, of course, developed in response to the current pandemic. However, these more efficient, contactless ways of conducting daily business certainly have become more popular and attractive—and even indispensable—in the current environment. The property management industry also had been applying smarter, greener and more digital technologies to traditional workflows before the coronavirus pandemic hit. Businesses already fluent in these refined approaches have seen a smoother transition into our “new normal.” Many tenants, with their smartphones in hand and an inclination toward self-service already cultivated, are poised to adapt to a property management inspection model that is safer, more effective and resilient to social distancing restrictions. Property inspections, the bread-and-butter product of any successful property management business, are the point at which the tenant’s living space, the owner’s investment and the property manager’s responsibility all intersect in meaningful, often actionable documentation. But inspections performed in person, on pen and paper, are extremely vulnerable to disruption, as we have so clearly seen over the last two months. In this new era, property managers can’t, in good conscience and within government guidelines, perform these inspections in person without potentially putting inspectors and tenants in harm’s way. Yet neither can these inspection activities be suspended indefinitely without consequence. Rental property tenants certainly enjoy more self-service capabilities now than they did 10 years ago. Self-guided rental property viewings facilitated by smartphones and keyless entry or lockbox technologies are sure to become increasingly popular in the next few years. Leasing application processes, now commonly performed online, will continue to become more paperless and contactless. Inspections, really, are the final link in the chain that can keep all but the most essential servicers and vendors from needing to visit a property in person during a tenant’s occupancy. With smart technologies, property managers can empower their tenants to become effective inspectors of the properties they call home. Contactless Move-In Inspections It’s moving day. New tenants pull up in their box truck, gain access to their new home via lockbox and step inside. They receive an email from their property manager. It instructs them to perform a move-in inspection on their mobile device—or else review and provide feedback to a pre-move in inspection completed by the property manager before move-in day. A few taps on the device and the tenants are inspecting the property exactly as it has been defined by the property manager. A user-friendly app walks them through the property room by room and one detail at a time, prompts them to snap photos, note conditions and provide any other info required in the inspection template. With that done, the tenant signs on the screen and taps to submit the inspection. After receiving the tenant-completed move-in report (or pre-move in feedback), the property manager reviews it and follows up as appropriate, with additional requests for info and clarification, perhaps, or by dispatching an essential service vendor. The move-in is complete and social distance has been maintained as much as possible. Mid-Lease Tenant Inspections Of course, tenant-completed move-in inspections alone won’t cut it. Property managers should implement contactless mid-lease inspection processes and procedures whenever possible to ensure a comprehensive solution. An effective tenant-completed inspection activity leaves little room for error: It guides the tenant point by point and asks the tenant to provide specific information about the property: Has the HVAC filter been changed?  Are there any water leaks under the sinks?  Are there certain winterization steps that need to be performed?  Are these concerns routine? Sure. But any one of them can pose significant and complex ramifications if not properly addressed. A tenant can easily complete and document various types of corrections and info requests using a contact-free approach. Complaint-based follow-ups, documentation of HOA/lease-violations corrections and due-diligence info requests are the most common, but even unique situations can be accommodated with the right tools. The property manager remains up-to-date with property conditions without ever setting foot on the occupied property. Only essential service vendors and the like ever need do so. Can you eliminate the need for professional inspectors entirely? Of course not. The expert eye of a veteran property inspector should not be undervalued. At the same time, property managers in the post-COVID-19 environment will be wise to collaborate with their tenants to remotely collect as much information as possible. It’s also important to realize that most tenants want this too. Most tenants are conscientious and responsible, complying to landlord requests when asked. Nonetheless, they prefer to avoid having strangers walk through their property, particularly in this current crisis. As such, they are incentivized to perform these inspection activities in a timely and effective manner, to keep from having an in-person follow-up. Remote inspection activities not only make it easier on you as a property manager, they can enhance your value from the perspective of your tenants. Tools are Available—Use What Works Whether you end up adapting more generic tools or apply a specific dedicated solution, the objective is the same. You need a technology solution that allows you to capture exactly the data you need from the property in a way that is easy both for your tenants and for your employees. Some property managers have settled on informal processes like FaceTime or Zoom for their purposes. Various form generator tools—such as Google Forms, WP Forms for hosted WordPress sites, and others—are available as well.  Finally, there are tailored applications with customizable features available. The important takeaway is that all the technologies and many of the specific tools already exist for property managers to become more safe, increasingly efficient and less vulnerable to disruption. Additionally, it’s clear that our consumer culture is ready for self-completed inspections. Perhaps the best time for individual property management businesses to begin implementing these kinds of technologies was five years ago, but the second-best

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Spring Yard Cleanup Is a Better Investment Than You Think

Investing in spring yard cleanup for your properties can go a long way toward improving curb appeal and overall ROI. During the winter season, your properties are exposed to snow, ice and cold winds that blow in leaves, litter and other debris you don’t want on your properties. These harsh winter elements can blanket your properties and stifle your lawns’ roots from the oxygen and nutrients they need to maintain their healthy appearance and preserve curb appeal year-round. Come springtime, your properties may either come out unscathed or look like a scene from Twister. Or, they might just land somewhere in between. Regardless of which end of the spectrum they fall, cleaning and inspecting your properties in the spring is essential to fostering curb appeal, creating a satisfying experience for residents and improving ROI. Fostering Curb Appeal In situations where residents are responsible for yard care, it’s not uncommon for them to ignore their landscaping duties and leave owners with the risk and cost of neglect. HOA violations, rehab costs, decreased property value and lower rental prices are just a few of the factors that can hit your bottom line when curb appeal is overlooked. To avoid the expenses associated with turnover, preventive yard maintenance can help you catch small problems before they turn into larger expenses. Annual spring cleanup ensures that your lawns are on their way to a healthy and beautiful season and are utilizing all the care lawn products efficiently. The National Rental Home Council suggests single-family home rental operators should take preventative maintenance measures throughout their ownership to ensure properties remain in good condition. Preventive maintenance that aims to protect and improve the appearance and state of the rental home can eliminate rehab costs and fees associated with HOA violations. It can also limit the vacancy rates since a well-cared-for property leads to a more satisfying experience for residents. Researchers at the University of Alabama and the University of Texas at Arlington collected and assessed Google Street View photos and sales data from 88,890 properties and determined that homes with excellent curb appeal sold for 7%-14% morethan homes with less-than-ideal curb appeal. Creating a Satisfying Resident Experience Considering spring cleanup is your biggest opportunity of the year to get your properties in shape, it shouldn’t be left in the hands of your residents. Often, residents don’t have the appropriate equipment, knowledge and desire to maintain your investment. Provide your residents with an experience that allows them to enjoy the great amenities your rental has to offer, such as a well-manicured property. This is one thing you can do to give your residents the feeling of being a homeowner without all the added responsibility. The more your residents “feel” like homeowners, the less likely they are to rent elsewhere. The less your residents rent elsewhere, the more money you make. “Single-family rental operators should aim to provide residents with a highly satisfactory experience from the time of the first contact through the selection of their home, the move-in process and for the duration of the experience,” advises the National Rental Home Council. In addition to creating a satisfying experience for residents, cleaning and inspecting your properties throughout the year will help ensure they are well maintained. As many property owners have experienced, some tenants have a history of neglecting the yard. Regularly providing exterior services for your properties will give residents more appreciation and respect for your investment. It’s up to you to set the standards for how your properties should be maintained. Introducing your residents to your standards of yard care will lay the groundwork for how the interior of the property should be maintained, ultimately reducing your expenses inside and outside the home. Improving ROI The key to improving ROI for your properties is performing routine maintenance. Rehabilitating your properties between residents is neither cost-effective nor practical. Your properties should always be in rent-ready condition regardless of occupancy status. Spring cleanup is a vital piece of the year-round maintenance that keeps your properties in good condition. Maintaining your properties regularly will attract more long-term residents and reduce the costs associated with listing and marketing your properties. Studies show that improving landscape quality could increase rental rates by as much as $117 a month and improve turn times by as much as 30 days. Bottom line, better maintained yards translate to more money for owners. Neglecting your properties or assigning yard care duties to residents can increase your operating costs. Giving your lawns a good place to start in the spring can set you up for long-term success. Sidebar To keep up with curb appeal and protect your investment, here are a few simple and affordable landscaping tips you can implement today to yield long-term results. Maintain Bushes and ShrubsTrimming bushes and shrubs is quite possibly the easiest way to add curb appeal to your properties. It also offers the most dramatic effects. Keeping up with routine bush and shrub trimming ensures your properties always look their best without breaking the bank. The key here is routine. Bushes and shrubs can give properties dramatic effects. But, if they are neglected, they can have a negative impact. Fertilize Your LawnMaybe it’s because fertilizing doesn’t offer instant gratification like lawn mowing or bush trimming that some people overlook this necessity. Still, fertilizing is a vital curb appeal booster with long-term benefits, including attracting and keeping residents. At the very least, you should be applying lawn fertilizer two times a year. Some areas require even more applications. Check with your landscaper on how often your lawns need to be fertilized.  Use a Steel Blade Edger to EdgeLet’s face it—using a weed eater to edge along sidewalks and walkways is a rookie mistake and can be spotted a mile away. Instead, ask your landscaper about using a steel blade edger at least once a month to give your properties a clean and sophisticated look. When you compare a steel blade edger to properties that use a string trimmer to

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Digital Certified Funds Automate Rent Payments

Digital innovations in property management reduce the risk of late payments and chargebacks. Landlords have long required new residents and those with a history of late payments to pay with money orders and cashier’s checks. Both are known as certified funds. Now, with the help of real-time financial verification data, residents of multifamily properties who are required to pay with certified funds can do so without leaving the comfort of their homes. And, property managers can streamline receivables collection. How it Works Digital certified funds, also known as online certified payments, give multifamily property operators a fully-automated front-office platform—and a paperless process. Residents can make online certified payments via a mobile device or desktop browser to pay their rent. The process starts by verifying user identity and bank account ownership. Next, the user’s transactional and behavioral data is analyzed in real time in order to authorize a certified transaction. This then allows the capture of funds from the user’s financial institution and settles the funds risk-free to the property. Automated Payment Logic The latest technology can also do the heavy lifting and minimize the manual overhead when it comes to preventing and processing late payments. Certified funds are typically required upon move-in, but property managers understand they are often used for residents who have a history of late payments. With the latest rent payment technology, property managers can use certified payment logic to set parameters that only present certified payment options to residents based on their past behavior. With this new automation, operators have the ability to avoid returned late payments by only accepting digital certified funds once a payment is deemed late. Additionally, operators can customize different settings based on each property’s needs, such as easily accepting prepayments from residents, which is beneficial when residents head out of town before their rent is due. Chargeback Protection Chargebacks were introduced more than 40 years ago, designed as a consumer protection effort to instill confidence in credit cards. Yet, the increasingly fraudulent consumer use of chargebacks is having a significant impact on property bottom lines. Recently, a multifamily regional property manager in northern California reported that they faced a loss of $15,000 in credit card chargebacks within a single month—from just two residents. One resident disputed six months of rent charges, and the other resident initiated a chargeback on several months of rent as well. As a result, the owner requested they stop accepting credit card payments altogether. However, using digital certified funds, the property manager was able to continue accepting credit card payments while removing all the risk from future potential chargebacks. Unfortunately, these aren’t isolated incidents. A 2019 study found that 81% of individuals admitted to filing a chargeback out of convenience and a considerable percent of the dispute cases were lost. While it is less common to see chargebacks on rent payments, these often occur with rental application fees and other property add-on services. In fact, Verifi, an industry leader in end-to-end payment verification, did the math on chargebacks. They found that every dollar lost to chargeback fraud costs the property an estimated $2.40. So, $100 in chargebacks can cost the property $240. Even for a single property, chargebacks can have a marked effect on net operating income while taking a material amount of time for property managers to resolve. However, those that have moved to modernized rent payments platforms have been able to avoid them. Cash Equivalent Payments  Because of widespread risk management practices among property management companies, cash equivalent payments are often required for certain situations. For example, a resident must obtain a traditional money order at a kiosk. Because money orders typically have caps on their value, a renter may need to obtain several money orders to reach the value of the payment. Another form of digital certified payment is also offered by MoneyGram, allowing residents to make payments via digital money orders from any MoneyGram kiosk. With more than 30,000 kiosks accessible in private and public locations, residents can now send all types of payments, at any time, without being subject to paying in person during the property manager’s office hours. MoneyGram comes with some market-leading built-in risk protections, including automatically attributing all payments made with MoneyGram to the correct apartment unit, thus eliminating the need to disclose additional sensitive informationwhich is often the case with cashier’s checks and paper money orders. Ultimately, paper money orders and similar forms of payment aren’t as safe as once believed. Repeated incidents of fraud over the last decade shows they can be easily stolen or tampered with. They also require manual processing, leaving them prone to errors and increased processing time. When payments went missing or were stolen, residents had to send the property manager another form of paper payment while the issue was being resolved. By sending and processing certified digital payments, renters and managers are assured zero risk. Digital money orders ensure lower liability since they require less handling, improved data accuracy because they eliminate manual payment processing, reduced theft and fraud, and immediate payment confirmation. Digital innovations are having a marked impact on traditionally manual financial processes, and they are reshaping the way property owners and investors manage their P&Ls. The combined benefits of these tech innovations deliver an opportunity to improve and exert some control over resident behavior and mitigate risk while protecting the bottom line for owners and their investors.

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Avoiding the Money Pit

Assessing and maintaining investment properties in growing portfolios In the classic 1980s movie “The Money Pit,” Walter (Tom Hanks) and Anna (Shelley Long) are house-sitting a New York City apartment owned by Anna’s ex-husband. When he suddenly evicts them, they decide to purchase a home and think they are getting a great deal on an estate outside the city. It soon becomes apparent that the purchase was too good to be true as the house falls apart, drains their wallets and, ultimately, destroys their relationship. What Walter and Anna failed to perform was proper due diligence before agreeing to purchase the estate. They did not assess the property’s condition and paid in more ways than one. While Walter and Anna bought the property to make it their own home, real estate investors also need to do their homework when purchasing properties for their portfolios and then continue to manage them throughout the leasing cycle. Managing rental or investment properties takes a lot of work. From getting the property rented by qualified tenants to executing the lease and collecting rent, it can become very time-consuming. Often real estate investors hire property managers or management companies to coordinate these day-to-day tasks. Equally important is ensuring the property itself is a profitable asset and subsequently maintained so it remains in marketable condition. Whether you own a large portfolio of investment properties spread across the country or a few local ones, properly maintaining those real estate assets is key to maximizing their value and your potential bottom line. You may want to consider a third-party property services company that can accommodate all your inspections and maintenance needs throughout the purchasing and leasing processes. Property Service Firms When engaging a third-party property services firm, determine whether it has flexibility and can handle any size portfolio—from one property to a large portfolio. And if you own assets in different areas of the country, a national property services firm with a trusted reputation for quality and consistent results is your best bet. Many real estate investors seek opportunities to expand their portfolios to outside markets and often buy properties in bulk. Having a property services company in place can help put your mind at ease. You’ll know the proper services will be completed to ensure you have made the right investment. This includes inspecting properties before purchase and completing due diligence assessments. Due Diligence Assessments The biggest risk in attaining an investment or rental property is current damage as well as susceptibility to additional damages. Issues like vandalism, tenant neglect or natural occurrences can affect not only the property’s profitability, but also be expensive for you to remedy. Investing in real estate can be a big risk. Mitigating those risks can be very difficult for growing investment firms. Performing due diligence will help you determine the profitability of the property you plan on purchasing. A comprehensive property inspection or assessment from a trusted third-party service provider is necessary to determine if the purchase makes good business sense and fits within the parameters of your current needs and portfolio. Knowing if the property is a good investment from the beginning and completing reoccurring assessments, to managing tenants and turnovers, you have to ensure you are getting the proper services to protect your investment. To keep the properties in your expanding portfolio in compliance, some of the key routine assessments and maintenance services you should employ include required landlord inspections once a dwelling is occupied and turnover services between tenant occupancy. Routine Inspections Services It is important to continue to keep an eye on your properties while they are leased and occupied by tenants. This is something that often can be overlooked, but your property services company can ensure you stay on top of it through routine service options. These inspection services are helpful for tenant turnovers, move-outs, lease renewals or monthly check-ins when the tenant owns a pet or has any other custom parameters in their lease that require regular assessments. The property services company will send a qualified field inspector to your property, document exterior and interior conditions, inform you of any damages and, if necessary, provide bids to remediate any damages in order to restore the property to a livable condition. These results include a written report on the condition of the interior and exterior of the property and detailed photo documentation. It also includes reporting on issues such as occupant neglect, infestation risks, roof damages, water intrusion and the presence of mold. Your property services company also should perform a listing inspection to check on a property that is for lease or sale. Be sure to get documentation of your agent’s or property manager’s services, including placement of signage and marketing materials. A qualified field inspector will do an on-site assessment of a property to verify it is in marketable condition. For an interior inspection, the inspector can either schedule a showing or attend an open house to also document the interior condition and cleanliness of your property. Operational Efficiencies Employing a property services company with national reach will aid in your operational efficiencies overall. Results will be consistent, and properties will be maintained in a uniform manner by qualified, local professionals. For example, a property services firm can help create processes for streamlined turnovers and non-emergency maintenance services. They also can be effective for completing eviction services and junk removal at properties that need cleaned out. To ensure you do not get trapped in a “money pit” and bogged down with unexpected expenses like Walter and Anna, creating these operational efficiencies will maximize the value of your real estate assets and safeguard your bottom line. Due diligence inspections and regular assessments and maintenance will keep the property profitable and minimize losses within your portfolio.

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