The industry of property management usually reflects the economy of a nation. Since the availability of multifamily and single houses flows with the global and national economy, the management of the available properties and upcoming developments often fluctuate with the housing forecast of the housing industry and the economic gains that make homeowning, new construction, or renting possible.
For property management companies to come up with new smarter approaches, Brian Setencich would recommend that you consider the following:
Have a clear line of sight
One of the issues that most managers of large property holdings have is the lack of a clear line of sight into the assets they have in their property portfolio. Individuals to the institutional owners can be affected by this lack of clarity. When property managers clearly understand the assets they have, they can easily plan on how to manage them to avoid compromising the quality of their property.
Record an update on the status of the property
In most cases, you will find owners of properties and portfolios lacking the up-to-date information on their properties. This is like neglecting an investment that is a source of income; the likelihood is that it will not fetch any more money if it is not well taken care of. When companies find themselves in this situation, they tend to have no idea of the status of the equipment on their properties. There are three results with this kind of approach:
- First, it will be difficult for the company to plan and prioritize any type of repairs on their assets, and any upkeep.
- Secondly, since the properties will not be well maintained, they will lose customers to other competitors.
- Thirdly, the repairs will pile up, and it will be tough to make any kind of repairs on time.
Once a property management company gets to this level, it is hard to get back up again. The smarter approach is to list down the kind of repairs and maintenance needed and prioritize how you are going to cater to them. Ensure you sort the issues that can escalate to the worst case faster to avoid more expenses on the repair. In the case of costly repairs, plan ahead of time how you are going to counter them.
How to plan for repairs and replacements
You need to plan for replacement and repair jobs accordingly, especially on assets like HVAC systems, plumbing, and electrical systems, because they can easily turn into enormous expenses. To manage these kinds of equipment, you can use asset tracking and planned replacements so that you can be at par with your property maintenance.
When it comes to planning for repairs, plan to do them during the low-cost offseason, instead of doing expensive emergency repairs when its peak season in the summer and winter season. This is what can make all the difference on how your property operates.
How to track equipment for repairs
Asset tagging or tracking requires you to log the model, age, and warranty status of services to help property owners to understand the type of systems that can fail and then plan the budgets accordingly.
For the asset tracking project, you need to work with a technician or a contractor to label the current units that are located behind the wall (e.g. HVAC systems, plumbing, and electricals) using a unique identifier. This identifier can then be scanned and logged through a mobile application by the technician.
Let us take an example of an HVAC system. Once you collect the data on the assets in the properties portfolio, you can build a comprehensive profile on the efficiency/SEER ratings, types of refrigerants used, brands of the equipment, tonnage, and the equipment condition. After collection of the data, you can generate a report that shows the health status of a particular property and the entire portfolio.
With this kind of report, Brian Setencich knows that property managers or investors can optimize their capital expenditure with a good plan for conducting replacements to avoid fluctuations in labor costs and prices of HVAC equipment.
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