Why is the rental process so painful for many property managers? Writing up “For Rent” advertisements, posting online and print ads and signs, and controlling costs are no easy task. If these advertisements are not reaching the right renters, it may feel like the whole process is just a lot of wasted time. We feel that there is a way to make the process easier by taking the time to identify the tenants who would react best to your advertising and marketing, and that apartment management software can help to streamline the rental process and take much of the burden off of property managers. In this post we will discuss what you can do to identify and advertise to the tenant who would most likely want to rent your property.

Step #1: Identify Your Ideal Tenant

The first step in the process is to understand what we call the “ideal tenant” for your rental and segment them into groups so that you can advertise to them most effectively. What do they do with their time? Where do they hang out? What newspapers and websites do they use? Going through a brainstorming process to identify these traits can help so that you better spend your time on reaching tenants where they are most likely to be. For example, if you manage rentals in a college town your ideal tenant would probably be college students, 18-25 years old, attending the university, that read the college newspaper and website. You can get as detailed as you want to help target these renters as precisely as possible.

Step #2: Advertise Where They Hang Out

Now that you have identified your ideal tenant, ask yourself where they are most likely going to see your rental advertisement. In the example in step #1, we identified that they read the college newspaper and website so this would be a great place for you to advertise your rentals. Also, be sure to keep in mind how can you adjust the wording of your advertisement to appeal to them. Your apartment management software may allow you to advertise only to certain websites, for example to Craigslist.com which can also help to target your demographic. If you are in a high foot traffic area maybe a “For Rent” sign would be a candidate. Or, if your ideal renter only reads the newspaper then that would be the way to go.

Step #3: Use Metrics to Track Progress

What good is a strategy if you can’t determine if it’s effective or not? Keeping good metrics is important to understand how well your advertising campaign is working and is important to make sure you aren’t wasting time and money in the wrong places. If you use online contact forms on your website, a great way to keep track of how your tenants found your rental is to include a field on the page to ask how they found your site when they fill out the form. Your apartment management software may also be able to track keywords to your website so that you can get a better understanding of what search terms are being used to find your website through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

These three steps should lay a good foundation for you to begin to get a better understanding of who your renters are and how to best reach them for the least amount of cost and also determine how effective your efforts are. How do you plan to better understand and target new renters?

Do you have a way to easily get in touch with your tenants and communicate with them regularly?  Whatever your answer, tenant management software can help to streamline the process, lower costs, and get important information to your tenants with ease when they need it.  Recently, we witnessed a fire caused by a grill being improperly used on a wooden back porch.  Fortunately the apartment building didn’t burn down and no one was injured.  This fire could have been avoided if the tenant was aware of rules and regulations about the proper use of grills and had easy access to building rules and regulations such as using a grilling pad and having a fire extinguisher nearby.

Improvement #1:  Use Electronic Communication

The easiest and most cost effective way to get information to your tenants is through electronic communication.  Email is probably the most effective means of sending information since you can attach files and pictures and send directly to your tenants.  With 80% of households in the U.S. having access to the internet at home and work, it is a great way to get information our quickly.  Other new technologies such as text messaging can also be used to send out information rapidly, for example a text message can be sent to tenants when there is an emergency water shutoff at a building.  Contacting tenants by phone is also an option but is time consuming.  Some tenant management software programs support automated phone calls, such as for maintenance request appointment reminders.

Improvement #2: Use Your Property Management Website

Does your property management website allow you to post messages and documents for your tenants, and when they log in to pay rent, does your site allow you to display important information to them?  Since many tenants misplace the important documents they were given when they signed the lease, it is essential that your tenant management software have an online repository for information so that tenants can easily find, download, and print documents they need.  Also, your website should have a way to alert tenants to information such as through a pop-up notification or scrolling banner.  For example, a notification can pop up at the start of warm weather to remind tenants about grill use rules for your building.

Improvement #3:  On-Property Messaging

Do you list your website address or use QR codes on any communications you have at your properties, for example on building signs?  We have seen many property management companies list at least their website address on each building so that tenants and even renters looking for apartments can find your website.  If you manage larger buildings, having a TV monitor that displays important building information is also a great option to alert tenants to building news.  Of course, having a message board in a common area such as near a front entranceway is also a great way to provide tenants with information and is used most widely.  We suggest that any messages posted on message boards also link to your website for more information.

What is your strategy to get information to your tenants more timely and easily and how are you using tenant management software to do so?

Much can be said for having a good looking website and its ability to attract the right renters for your business.  How much thought have you given to branding, advertising and marketing, and the overall look and feel of your company to create the right impression you want to present to the world?  In this post we will discuss website design and help you understand the importance of advertising, marketing, and branding to better see how they work hand-in-hand to affect your business.

Reason #1: Creates a Great First Impression

More than ever, renters are beginning their search for apartments on the internet.  If you don’t have a web presence yet or your website was designed years ago and is looking stale, you are probably missing out on a large pool of technology-savvy renters that are influenced by how your website looks.   As an example of how look and feel plays an important role, think of how Apple Computer has risen to dominance by building great looking and easy to use products.  You may be thinking, “I’m just a property management company, not Apple!”, but in many cases your website is the first impression your renters have of your business.  If they see an old, out of date, and unmaintained website the high-quality renters you want may look to your competitor who has that snazzy new website.  When it comes to technology, it only takes 2-3 years for a product to become obsolete so staying up to date and making use of new technology is important.

Take-away: Great property management website design plays a key role in convincing these renters to look at your company instead of your competitors. 

Reason #2:  Improves Advertising and Marketing Reach

Imagine this scenario: one of your apartments becomes available for rent, you post that is vacant to your social media enabled website, and you almost immediately have potential renters contacting you about showings.  Does this sound far-fetched?  With the increase in use of social media and the connectedness of the internet, we’ve seen many forward-thinking property managers use this strategy and rent their properties much more easily with a lot less cost.  New advertising and marketing tools like QR codes, Facebook and Twitter, and text messaging all help to spread the word about your business much faster than was possible even a few years ago.  You may have tried some of these tools or just don’t see the benefit, but believe us when we say that it is there for property managers who can use it effectively.

Take-away: Using new social media tools helps to advertise your business and market your properties much more easily that was possible before and for a lot less cost.

Reason #3: Builds Your Brand

While you may have not given much thought to developing your brand and what it stands for, branding is as important to attracting renters.   Taking the time to build your brand so that renters can relate to you and want to rent your properties is worth the effort.  To further explain why, think of a brand you admire.  What does using this brand mean to you?  How does it make you feel?  Would you recommend it to others and what would you say about it?  Think about how these questions you asked yourself relate to your business and use them to mold your brand's image.  

Take-away: Branding is important to develop the right image that you want renters to see of your company and plays a role in generating new business and referrals.

These three reasons we’ve discussed just touch on the subject of how property management website design plays a role to create the right impression of your business that impacts your advertising and marketing and helps to build your brand image.  How much though have you given to the importance of having great property management website design for your business?

You may have asked yourself just how rental property management software can help your business as you explored the many options on the market for online property management software tools. If you are using outdated software, spreadsheets, or the paper and filing cabinet method, online property management software tools have become very powerful in the past few years as the property management software industry has matured. In this post, we will specifically talk about why it’s worth the time and effort investigating new tools for your business and how it can save you money in the short and long term. It is also important to mention that the start of the recession, companies that have been able to successfully grow their business have made widespread use of new technology that has allowed them to be much more efficient and save on overhead costs. Who doesn’t want to be more efficient and do more with less?

You may not have realized that smaller companies and individual landlords are now able to run their businesses using the same best practices and efficiencies similar to that of larger rental property management companies. As rental property management software has become more powerful and new technologies have appeared, affordability is now better than ever. What may have cost you thousands of dollars five years ago can now be bought for much less, as wide availability of the internet has considerably lowered costs for online property management software. An interesting statistic that we came across recently is that today over 60% of property management businesses use a rental property management software system to automate tasks, track online leads, and provide tenants with online services. Like many other industries, successful property managers are increasingly moving toward offering these services to remain competitive and attract renters who are becoming more and more technology-savvy. According to research done by Software Advice, Inc., companies who use a rental property management software solution managed an average of 102 rental units per employee, as compared to 61 units per employee for those that used generic software such as spreadsheets! That’s a great productivity improvement that can free up time to work on more valuable tasks.

What’s your strategy for the future and how does online property management software fit into the picture? What would you do if you had a large amount of time freed up for yourself and your employees? Here are a few questions that we challenge you to consider:

1. If you had a considerable amount of new free time for yourself or your employees, what could you spend it on to grow your business and increase revenues?
2. How many times over the past year have you thought about how technology has changed your business and will continue to do so?
3. What is your strategy to provide tenants with online services such as maintenance requests, rent collection, and also make them available to use from smartphones and tablets?

In future posts we will talk about these three questions in much greater detail. This is an exciting time to be in the property management industry. As they say, knowledge is power and being prepared will help to bring you continued future success.

You may have wondered about the payment methods you would like to accept such as credit card or checking and what costs are involved.  Good news!  E-Rental Tools will allow you to accept both credit card and checking account payments right through your website at a cost that wont break the bank.  In this post, we’ll discuss the two types of payment methods your business can use and the benefits and drawbacks of each. 

ACH Payments

Typically, rents are collected using checking account deductions also known as ACH (Automated Clearing House) payments.  Why?  Because paying by check is cheap.  In fact, we recommend that our customers only use ACH for online rent payments because the processing costs are much lower for tenants.  These costs are typically only a few dollars per online rent payment and are added on as a processing fee at the time when rent is paid.  Add up the cost of a stamp, envelope, checks, and the time spent finding a mailbox, and this becomes a great convenience for your tenants.

Credit Cards

Credit cards are a great convenience and are always ready in a pinch when there isn’t an ATM nearby.  But, what you may not have known is that credit card processing is expensive!  Because of the high processing fees involved, we don’t recommend them for larger purchases such as online rent payments.  These fees are typically in the range of 2.25%-4% of total payment and can vary by which company issues the card and type of purchase made.  On a $1,000 rent, a 3% fee, for example, would end up costing an extra $30 in additional processing costs which is more than most tenants are comfortable paying.

So what do we recommend? We suggest that all of our customers use checking account processing for online rent payments, and credit cards for smaller payments such as online rental applications.   This offers the most flexibility and cost effectiveness for both you and your tenants.

Just what’s involved with collecting your tenant’s rent online using E-Rental Tools?  How does it work and how hard is it to set up?  When will my rents arrive?  Is it secure?  In this post we’ll answer those questions and more, and you’ll learn just how easy it is to get online rent collection set up for your business and put the hassle of rent collection behind you.  If you’re an E-Rental Tools customer, we have made it simple to set up online rent collection services and can get your business up and running in just a few days.

Step 1:  Set Up the Payment Gateway

To get started with online rent collection, your business will need to be set up with what’s called a payment gateway.  Simply, a payment gateway is a 3^rd party processing company that handles moving a rent payment transaction from a tenant’s bank account into yours.  E-Rental Tools has streamlined the process of setting up a payment gateway and can get the paperwork completed and approved in just a few days.  The process is similar to the forms you would fill out to open a new bank account, but without having to actually visit the bank!  We take care of filling out all of the application forms with your information, and all that’s needed from you is an electronic signature, which takes only a few minutes to complete and can be done online.  Depending on your volume of rent payments and time in business, you may be required to submit additional supporting document such as a cancelled check, business formation documents, or 2 months of bank statements.  The entire online rent collection setup can be done from the comfort of your home or office with little hassle to you.

Step 2:  Link Your Properties to Your Checking Account

After your account has been approved for the payment gateway, you’ll be ready to start accepting rent payments on your E-Rental Tools website.  We’ll take care of linking your checking account using your new payment gateway to your properties so that when a tenant makes an online rent payment it ends up in the right place.   This is a fast setup process and can be completed the same day your business is approved. 

Step 3: Begin Collecting Rent Through Your Website

Now that online rent collection is set up, you’ll want to inform your tenants that they can now pay their rent online through your E-Rental Tools website.   To access payments they will log in, click on the “Pay Online” link, enter their payment amount along with their checking account and routing number, then submit the payment.  That’s it!  The payment process takes under a minute, and if your tenant chooses, can select recurring payments to automatically have their rent paid on a chosen date each month.  This is convenient for the tenant and great for you, because you know the rent will be paid on time each month.  The tenant’s rent payment will be automatically deposited into your checking account and you won’t have to worry about checks getting lost in the mail, opening envelopes, and trips to the bank.   To handle security, we use bank-level 256 bit SSL encryption that encrypts all payment data entered into the E-Rental Tools system.

That’s it, 3 steps to easy online rent collection using E-Rental Tools.  If you aren’t already collecting your rent online, why not get started today?

Just how easy is it for a renter to find my properties on the Internet?  This is a question we have been asked many times from our clients as they look to understand how well their paid and non-paid property advertising efforts are working for them.  As anyone who has done any internet advertising knows, these costs are both expensive and time consuming - and money doesn’t grow on trees.  So just how can a property manager find out if their advertising is working for them?

Fortunately, our diverse customer base allows us to speak with many property managers to understand and develop best practices for advertising online.   To help answer this question for our clients, we have been working to develop a method to help our property managers best allocate their advertising dollars.  We’ve coined this term “Propability”, and define it as: the ability of a property to be easily found on the internet and to attract well-qualified renters.   Propability should be an important consideration to take into account for any property advertising and marketing that you plan to do.

What Determines Propability?

• Ad Content - Does your ad’s content sound professional and does it entice the renter to continue reading to learn more about your rental?  The better the content, the more engaged your ad reader will be.   This also includes correcting spelling and grammar errors that can make your business look unprofessional.

• Photos, Video, and Floor plans - These are probably the most important, since as the saying goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words.  Do you take professional looking pictures of your properties?  Do you have 360 degree views, great lighting, high quality video walkthroughs, and include floorplans?

• Keyword Tagging - Property listing websites and search engines rely on specific search terms that help renters to find properties that interest them.  Are you using the right terms to find a great match for your property?

• Web Search - Rentals typically aren’t listed long enough to be indexed by Google and Bing, but the website that you list your properties on is very important.   Listings on high-quality websites are going to have a higher number of renters and will drive more traffic to view your rental.  Also, don’t forget about using niche websites if you have unique properties such as luxury apartments or vacation rentals.

• Social Media - The use of social media websites and tools such as Facebook, twitter, and Google+ are great ways for your rental to quickly and easily spread among groups.  For example, a Facebook “like” of your rental can quickly lead to hundreds or even thousands of people seeing your property.  This also helps to build brand recognition for your business.  We believe social media will continue to become more important over time as an advertising mechanism.

• Linkability - An important tie-in to social media is how linkable your property is so that a renter can save it for later or send to another person.  Do you offer social media buttons, emailing of property listings, and the ability for a renter to print or save properties for later without having to do a new search?

In the coming months, we will be publishing more information on propability and how it can help your business, and also discuss how we plan to integrate propability into the E-Rental Tools property management software package.

Any others we’re missing that are important to your property advertising?

While doing some industry and competitive research over the past few days, we came across some great statistics that we thought our property managers should know about.  More specifically, we believe that similar to other industries that have been revitalized through technology, the property management industry is marching toward a time of rapid change that will call for an increased use of technology to save time and cut costs, find the best renters, and ultimately remain competitive.

Reason #1: There are over 53 million renters under 30 years of age in the U.S.

Surprisingly, 71% of renters in the U.S. are under age 30 according to recent National Multi Housing Council statistics.  This Generation Y demographic has grown up with technology and having instant access to information at their fingertips.  They are technology savvy and prefer the ease of use of the internet to interact with friends, make purchases, do banking, and find places to live.  That said, we believe that it is very important for property managers to have a great web presence, especially since this large group of renters has come to expect businesses to be online.  The age of finding apartments through “For Rent” signs and in classified ads is quickly passing.

Reason #2:  Cloud computing has significantly lowered property management software costs

Just what is cloud computing and what does it mean to property management?  Over the past several years, the cloud computing buzzword has become mainstream and has been featured in commercials by Microsoft, Apple, and others.  Simply, “in the cloud” means that software is hosted through the internet.  It slightly differs from a traditional website by allowing applications to be used and paid for dynamically, much like a utility such as electricity where you pay for as only as much or as little as you use.   This has significantly lowered costs for companies such as E-Rental Tools who provide software online because it has removed the need to purchase, manage, and maintain web servers since they can now be bought as a service on demand.  This trickles down to the customer to ultimately benefit everyone and make technology more accessible than before.

Of course, there are also many other great benefits that technology can bring to your business which we will be writing about in future posts.  Where do you think technology is headed within the property management industry?