The outlook for the rental industry looks challenging, with economic experts predicting things getting worse before they truly stabilize and get better – pushing property managers to look for unique ways to cut costs and mitigate any losses. While there are dramatic cost savings strategies that are often taken at the regional and corporate level, onsite managers can adjust some of their practices for savings that seem small at first, but add up to a substantial amount of gross margin retained for the company.
To help you get started, our team put together a list of 5 Ways Property Managers Can Cut Down on Costs.
1. Adjusted Office Hours
Updating your office hours during the global pandemic is a simple way to ensure you bring labor costs, and facility costs down. Adjusting hours can allow you to suspend utility usage to your onsite office, maintenance costs, with the added benefit of encouraging social distancing for your staff. While your residents recognize that short-term office hour adjustments in operational practices are prudent and necessary; long-term or permanent change may not be so well received, as your residents are accustomed to having access to someone to speak with and prospective residents often stop by this office in hopes of receiving a tour. Which brings communications into play.
2. Set up a Remote Communication System (that would work post-covid)
Investments in communications tools like Notifii Connect, which allow you to text or email prospects and residents enables you to adjust office hours and work remotely while also cutting down on the costs of printing flyers, posting notices, and the labor cost of having someone in-person to answer questions at all times. Just as residents are accustomed to face-to-face communication with their property manager, they’re also quite accustomed to texting or chatting with businesses from their phones to receive more information and updates. Forgo hours of posting notices, and send out texts with announcements for the property in moments.
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3. Limit Communal Amenity Usage
Either closing community amenities, adjusting hours, or changing capacity for your communal amenities, such as pools or gyms, can help decrease the cost of intensive cleaning in these areas. Ensure the safety of your residents by promoting social distancing while simultaneously saving on your bottom line. Areas, where physical activity takes place in particular, need deeper cleans than others, so more dramatic cost savings would come from closing these areas entirely.
4. Go Paperless
While a small saving in the beginning, this can be a huge cost saving in the long run. Encourage your team to utilize their devices over paper. Easy to navigate PDFs and spreadsheets for reference rather than big binders filled with information can not only save you printing costs but also organize your information well enough that time savings are rolled into that.
Save on Communications Costs with Notifii Connect
Notifii Connect is a communications hub designed for property managers to have two-way conversations with residents even when out of the office. For the resident, they’re texting you like they would anyone else, and for the property manager, they log into the Notifii app and message residents in one central location.
We invite you to join us for a one on one 30 minute demo and learn more about how Notifii Connect can bolster your community operations.