Author: Peter Altobelli, Vice President & General Manager, Yardi Canada

The lack of housing supply and robust growth in renters has Canada’s apartment market sizzling hot. For instance, in Q2 2023 the Saskatchewan average year-over-year in-place rent grew to 6.8%. With momentum like this, it’s crucial that housing providers identify opportunities to increase NOI and ensure tenant satisfaction. Here’s how:

Simplify your operations

It’s time to embrace automation. Automating reporting and other operations via a modern property management platform allows you to minimize cost and effort. For example, a recent Yardi study showed that clients with portfolios of 1,000 units process over 2,300 invoices per month, totaling 28,000 invoices per year. The task of processing one invoice can take five minutes – that equates to over 2,300 hours of labour per year. Outsourcing this task to a full-service invoice processing provider can quickly save your business real money and valuable time.

And as for the monthly reporting process, an Alberta-based company stated, “Automatic reporting has turned 30 to 40 minutes of work into the click of a button.” By reducing the amount of work required for invoice processing and reporting, you have more time to focus on growing your business.

Get in front of more customers

With some of the highest vacancy rates in the country, Saskatoon being 3.6% in Q2 2023 and almost 50% of renters say visiting a property website influences their future rental decisions, property owners in Saskatchewan should think beyond internet listing services (ILS) and focus on having a holistic digital marketing strategy in place to attract and convert more leads.

With the right provider and property management software, built-in marketing automation can simplify posting vacant units on an ILS and your property and corporate websites. An integrated system centralizes all your property data and enables you to automatically post relevant leasing details online in real time. And with professional websites, you can easily market newly renovated units, highlight your best amenities and showcase your brand and reputation to stand out from the competition.

Increase customer accessibility

You can have an immensely positive impact on tenants when you make yourself easy to contact. While you can’t always be available, the right technology ensures you never miss a beat.

Begin by using tools that minimize the space between you and your tenants. Given the choice, 73% of renters prefer to pay their rent online – this is a perfect opportunity for you to leverage tenant portals. With a secure tool, tenants can easily access property details, submit maintenance requests, pay rent and more online. They also make it easy for your office to track requests in one place, ensuring you never miss a request.

In the event of an emergency, a portal may not be enough. With a 24-hour maintenance call centre, you alleviate most of the stress that comes with having to manage calls from tenants on your own. The call centre will be able to respond anytime your tenants have an emergency, showing renters that you have their best interests in mind.

Stand out to your investors

Let’s look at ways to attract new investors and deepen relationships with your current partnerships. Most investors want the same 24-hour, self-service options that your renters have. Transparency builds trust, and a few basic tools will provide investors the access and transparency they desire.

Investor portals conveniently allow you to export reports and provide instant access to information. Getting signatures and capturing information becomes less time-consuming when these details are housed on a secure, cloud-based and mobile-friendly platform.

Automated workflows simplify reporting and communication, making property information more accessible to your investors. Best of all, the right investment portals can seamlessly integrate with your property management software, so you never have to switch platforms and data is automatically shared between them.

Find the best all-in-one software for you

By embracing an all-in-one platform with corporate and property websites, automated workflows, advanced reporting, maintenance call centre, tenant and investor portals and more, you can streamline your entire business and keep your tenants, staff and investors happy. And you can eliminate the stress of maintaining several third party integrations and vendor relationships by making sure all these capabilities are offered by a single software provider.

For more information on tech options that can support you in achieving these goals, please visit YardiBreeze.ca.