Like your clients, your tenants rely on you for a lot, from the approval process to the various maintenance and repair issues that inevitably come up with any unit over time. Keeping your tenants happy means showing them that you are responsive to their needs and can productively deliver results. Here are 4 ways digital property management can help you do this.
1. You’re More Likely to Spot an Issue Before It Gets Bigger
Problems that are ignored have a tendency to become bigger, as anyone who is familiar with maintenance and repairs can attest. Your inspections are a chance to catch small issues before they mature into larger problems for incoming tenants. Of course, you only have a finite amount of time and attention, and if you’re trying to keep track of a lot of things it’s easy to have a memory lapse.
Digital property management streamlines the whole process of inspections. If you use a property inspection app, you’re likely to find that you suddenly have more hours in the day, particularly on your busiest days. That’s because a property inspection app eliminates the need for you to actually type up a report, meaning you’ll have more time and attention for spotting problems before they get any bigger.
Even if your tenants don’t notice any of this, they’ll be happier for not having had to deal with that dry rot you took care of before it spread, or the sagging gutters you replaced a week before they moved in.
2. Significant Problems Resolved More Efficiently
Sadly, not all problems are caught before they become large and very troublesome. Dealing with larger problems is an unfortunate part of life, but it’s a part of life that it pays to get over and done with as efficiently as possible.
Digital property management is, hands-down, far more efficient than conventional pen-and-clipboard property management. The hours of time and trouble a good property inspection app will save you means that much more time you have available for resolving things that have gone wrong.
Few people are likely to be happy in the face of a significant problem, exactly, but if the problem is cleared up in record time they’re likely to be very happy about that. Whether it’s a septic tank that needs to be pumped or an infestation of termites that needs to eradicated, your tenants are likely to be a lot happier with you if you demonstrate an ability to get the problem solved ASAP.
3. Faster Communication With the Owner
There’s a reason people prefer Wi-Fi to carrier pigeons: no one loves slower communication. With a property inspection app, you can send your report to the client as soon as you’ve filled out the checklists and taken the pictures. You can even include video. Don’t worry about bulky files, either: a good digital property management app will send your reports to clients as easy-to-handle links.
Even if your inspection takes place sometime before new tenants move in, it still has the potential to be of enormous benefit to them. Faster communication between you and the client means more efficiency in your relationship overall. In addition to faster fixes for problems, this can also be helpful for letting clients know when a property is ready for new tenants that much sooner.
Of course, if you’re inspecting an issue that has come up while the tenants are on-site, the sooner you can resolve it the better. Housing problems and inspections to deal with them constitute disruptions to people’s lives, and the sooner you can get it all over with the happier your tenants will be.
4. More Productive Management
The more that people are counting on you to deliver, the more important it is to be productive in how you manage your time. What you’re likely to find is that digital property management is a great deal more productive than the conventional kind. And if there’s one kind of property manager tenants are happier with, it’s a productive and responsive property manager.
