The property management industry is fast-paced and dynamic. Property managers need to fill vacant rental units quickly, ensure that tenants are happy and paying rent on time, and keep operations running smoothly. Property management software can help automate and streamline tasks, eliminating manual work and saving time. And, a superior property software solution addresses the specific uses and target markets of busy Canadian property managers.
Property Management Use Cases: What to Look For
Multifamily Residential Property Management
Whether you oversee various multifamily buildings or multiple units across a region, your job involves ensuring revenue, lowering turnover and maintaining the property. Residential property managers look for property management software that enables tenant self-service in the form of online payments and maintenance requests. It’s also important that your property management software enable marketing tools that allow you to automatically update ILS listings to fill vacancies as soon as possible. You should also be able to create different websites for each rental building, and brand each one individually.
Student Property Management
If you are managing student properties you face some distinct challenges including mass move-ins and move-outs at certain times of the year, and being able to divide the rent by room/roommates. Just like with residential properties, it’s important to be able to automate and easily update your ILS listings so you can quickly post vacancies when students prepare to move out. Student often share the rent, so your software should feature built-in rent splitting for housemates. Online payment options makes it easier for first-time renters to pay on time.
HOAs and Condos Associations
These types of communities have certain levels of expectations concerning building and concierge services, communications, resident relations and online presence. HOA/Condo managers should look for a customer-centric system that includes a web-based resident portal to more easily communicate with residents via desktop, tablet or phone. Through the resident portal HOA/Condo managers can share CC&Rs, and send reports to the appropriate board members. Staff and residents should also be able to track service requests.
Property Software: Must-Have Tools
A top-rated Canadian property management software solution should include these time-saving tools:
Tenant Portal: Connect with your tenants easily and seamlessly with an intuitive, integrated and powerful tenant portal.
Online Payments: Forget about chasing cheques. Empower tenants to pay their rent online.
Leasing & Applications: Make complex tasks simple by automating and streamlining the leasing and application cycle.
Communication Tools: Centrally manage all communications between tenants, maintenance teams and other key stakeholders.
Marketing Tools: Increase applications and decrease vacancies with integrated marketing tools and automation.
Maintenance & Inspections: Get an end-to-end solution, from maintenance requests to generating purchase and work orders straight through to mobile inspections.
Software Guide: Key Features
No matter what your target audience, multifamily, student or housing associations, property management software needs to have these key features:
Ease of Use: Not all software solutions are intuitive. From running reports to interact with tenants it has to work exactly the way you would expect it to. Interfaces and dashboards must be easy to understand and use. If you are in the market, be sure to request a demo, so you can see it in action.
Data Security/Privacy: Look for features like end-to-end encryption, multiple firewalls, secure access and remote site linking keeps sensitive data private and secure. A top Canadian property management solution will ensure that your data is always compliant with Canadian laws and requirements.
Better Collaboration: Especially in a pandemic, property management software must enhance collaboration between teams and better coordination of tasks. Things like at-a-glance dashboards, digital records, communications tools, and anywhere/anytime access play a huge role in managing your business more efficiently and effectively.
The Ability to Scale: With more property mergers and acquisitions, property management software that allows you to scale up isn’t a nice to have, but a must-have. Top software solutions will allow your property firm to easily add on 10, 50, 100 or 1,000 new units.
Real-Time Data: A rearview mirror view of your operations isn’t good enough. You need to be able to get a comprehensive and accurate look at your properties. This includes things like which properties have the most number of collections, which portfolios have the most amount of maintenance requests, etc. These real-time KPIs give you valuable info about the health of your assets.
Testimonials and Customer Base: Look for testimonials and to see which other companies use the property management software. You’ll want to see that they have a robust client list of reputable firms. This means the software company has earned the trust of clients and is working to deliver results. (Our property management platform is top-rated, with 5-star ratings both on Capterra and Software Advice.)
How Property Vista Helps
Property Vista is a property management software solution that transforms how property managers manage their properties and build tenant relationships to grow their business. Property Vista integrates all of the necessary tools for property managers to efficiently manage their properties and improve the tenant experience - from prospective tenant applications to move-out inspections and everything in between, Property Vista’s intuitive cloud-based platform helps property managers create a meaningful and modern tenant experience. Need more reasons to consider Property Vista for your organization? Talk to us, we can show you how we can help your business flourish.
