5 Common Property Management Issues and Solutions

Property management is a challenging industry. But as the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The more you understand and plan for common property management issues, the better poised you'll be to respond when they arise.  

How To Solve the 5 Most Common Property Management Issues

We've identified the top five issues facing property managers and provided tips on how to solve them. Across the board, property management software stands out as a game changer for managing and automating issues across properties and tenants.  

1. Sourcing and Keeping Up With Maintenance Issues

Whether you manage individual properties or entire buildings, the fact is that things will stop working. To avoid surprises, develop a preventative maintenance program that brings in professionals to review and assess structural, plumbing, and electrical aspects of your rental properties. Further, make sure that each of these areas receives the ongoing maintenance required to extend its service life.

Property turnover is a great time to perform routine inspections so you can flag and address maintenance issues and property damage. Software can help you seamlessly book professionals who can manage the cleaning and maintenance aspects involved in turnover to ensure the tenants' expectations are met and the property owner's investment is protected.

Use property management software to automate preventative maintenance tasks and monitor the integrity and lifespan of a property's key elements. Property management software can also help you track maintenance costs, work orders, and invoices. This all-in-one resource creates a digital record of work done on the property, saving you time and effort.

2. Collecting Rent on Time

Set up a clear process for collecting rent with transparent penalties if payment is late. Make it easy for tenants to pay you by automating payment collection. Automation takes the guesswork out of when a check will arrive in the mail or funds will appear in your account.

This is another area where property management software excels. Look for one that can integrate with your accounting software so you can easily track payments and flag issues for action.    

3. Communicating With Tenants

Communication can make or break your business. Building trust and rapport with tenants and property owners is essential so tenants feel heard, and owners feel represented.  

Establish dedicated communication channels for tenants and landlords. Whether it's assigning someone to liaise with them individually or using a portal to allow tenants to submit and track requests, find a uniform approach that works for you. Ensure you have easy access to each other as issues arise so you can respond in a timely manner.  

Tenants and property owners tend to reach out most often about revising lease terms and conditions, changing rental dates, or repairs needed on the property. If you've already got a preventative maintenance plan in place, you may be able to anticipate some of these requests. This allows you to be proactive instead of reactive with tenants by sharing when maintenance and assessments will take place.  

Tenant communications is another area where property management software excels. Managing information on tenants can be tedious and cumbersome if left to email or phone calls alone. Centralizing communication through property management software lets you and your staff easily see where issues stand with tenants and properties without exhaustive email searches and games of phone tag.  

4. Earning More Bookings

Advertising and reputation are key to helping you earn more bookings. Happy tenants attract new tenants, and the right marketing plan makes it easy for them to find you.  

Think creatively about how you market your properties. Showcase not just what sets your property apart, but also how your property management approach makes staying with you easy and hassle-free.    

Use your property management software to send tenants a thank you for staying at your property and ask them to write a review. Use those reviews to boost interest in your property and enhance its credibility. If you've done your job well on maintenance, communication, and making payments simple, prospective tenants will want to work with you to plan their next stay.  

5. Finding Software With Enough Key Integrations

Property management software can make you more efficient and your workload easier to manage. Automating your day-to-day workflow is especially important as you scale up and add new properties to your inventory. Instead of having to do tedious, repetitive tasks manually to manage a property, the right software can handle them with little extra intervention on your part.    

Before choosing property management software, make a list of the specific functions you need. Flagship property management software offerings can manage bookings, calendars, communication with tenants, cleaning, maintenance, inventory, marketing, and payments, as well as generate reports on all of these topics.

Make your life easier by looking for property management software that can integrate with the platforms you already use. Good software helps your time management by working seamlessly with your accounting, HR, advertising, and booking platforms. This synergy gives your business a big boost.  

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A Solution That Puts Your Property Management Issues To Rest

The common denominator in creating systemic change to solving property management challenges is using the right property management software. Tidy offers a one-stop solution to solve your property management issues.  

Tidy helps you attract and communicate with tenants, manage bookings, collect payments, track expenses, and manage your teams so you know who's handling what at all times. It excels at connecting you with pros that deliver the highest standards for services like maintenance and cleaning, which goes a long way to keep you and your tenants happy. What's more, Tidy is already integrated with the most popular and reliable platforms in the industry, so you can easily sync up all aspects of your property management business.

If you're ready to say goodbye to property management surprises and hello to synergy and efficiency, sign up with Tidy today.