How Can Multifamily Do a Better Job of Using Technology?

Like every other industry, multifamily continues to try to figure out the best ways to use technology to streamline its operations and provide better service to its customers.

Technology is used throughout the industry, of course, but here are three areas getting more attention than most in 2014:

1. Improving revenue management by crunching big data. The industry has been adding hundreds of thousands of units per year in recent years to keep up with the high demand. That means, among other things, there’s more money than ever coming in, and that revenue needs to be properly accounted for. Related to that, property management companies are receiving billions of pieces of information – so called big data – that they must analyze in order to answer questions about what their residents do, what they want and what they’ll pay for it. There is great demand within the industry to find analysts who can use technology to make sense of all this data, figuring out how to sell the right product at the right place and the right price.
2. Seeking customer feedback and responding to it. Social media can be multifamily’s best friend or its worst enemy. Online ratings and reviews – positive or negative – can attract residents to properties or repel them. Either way, these ratings can’t be ignored. Property management companies – or the technology firms they hire — are focused on using technology to locate these reviews so they can quickly respond to them, using positive reviews for marketing efforts and communicating offline with negative reviewers.
3. Accepting and generating more documents on line. This isn't just about using less paper. Multifamily is always looking to be more user-friendly, and offering residents the opportunity to fill out rental applications and leases online is a great way to do it. But some property managers have seen this convenience backfire, allowing dishonest people to apply for apartments using fictitious names or the names of corporations, and signing documents electronically. Some property managers and leasing agents say they sometimes don’t see these residents for the first time until they move in, and by then, they don’t have two actual signatures to compare if things turn sour.