Entrata Blog

Building Efficiency into Accounting Processes Accounting professionals deal with a million little things every day: creating journal entries, importing entries, coordinating data from payment management tools, etc. And every task must be carried out precisely and accurately, or there will be additional work down the line as they locate and reconcile any errors.

As we step into 2024, the educational landscape is showing signs of recovery with a notable 1.2% rise in enrollment rates for the first time since the pandemic. Over two-thirds of institutions witnessed growth in undergraduate enrollment this fall, signaling a positive shift in the academic sphere. Correspondingly, in the realm of property management, we at Entrata have observed a surge in pre-leasing activities, indicative of a bustling year ahead.

If you do have a mandate for renters insurance in your lease agreement, it doesn’t do much good if you aren’t taking the steps to ensure residents are in compliance. Below are a few tactics we’ve seen that when put in practice have a significant impact on the number of insured residents at the beginning of the lease as well as the number of residents that maintain coverage while residing at your property.

In the property management world, data has emerged as a powerful tool for driving success. The ability to collect, analyze, and use data effectively can provide property managers with valuable insights, inform decision-making, and ultimately improve operational efficiency. Entrata President Chase Harrington had explored the topic with the company’s new VP of Product and Data Management, Cody Smith in a 2023 Entrata Summit session, Unleashing the Power of your Data with Entrata. They explored the nuances of data and its role in the industry within the framework of the stages of data maturity, showing how property managers can leverage data to optimize their operations.

This is part two in our series that focuses on basic digital marketing strategies that are proven to help you attract and convert leads. In part one of our series on digital marketing, we focused on what can be done to help acquire leads for your properties, but that’s just one piece of the puzzle. If those leads don’t progress down the funnel, all of that effort was for not. This post focuses on how we suggest working leads once they’ve entered your CRM.

Nearly half of Americans may have had their information stolen in the massive Equifax data breach revealed last week. Equifax collects, aggregates and distributes information on over 800 million individual consumers and more than 88 million businesses worldwide, including many multifamily companies. Entrata uses Experian for all resident screening and verification processes and does not interface with Equifax for any of their services.

Entrata is updating our delinquency management tools to make chasing down those elusive unpaid balances that much easier.

As more and more residents opt for online shopping and home delivery, properties are struggling to keep up with the ever-increasing number of packages delivered to their offices. Receiving a package for a resident insures that it’s more secure than if it were left on a doorstep, but it can add a considerable logistical burden to property staff. One property estimated that it took personnel between 90 minutes and two hours to receive packages, log them in, and send resident notifications. Every day. Weekends were particularly challenging when only one person was in the office, and perhaps inevitably, they found themselves frequently dealing with lost packages, unclaimed shipments, and packages that weren’t logged correctly.

The apartment industry has always utilized data to some degree. But the metrics used in the past were often those of a general variety that nearly anyone could access, including broad regional trends and basic submarket data.

Each October the Department of Homeland Security launches a campaign to raise awareness about the importance of cybersecurity. With news of data breaches increasing in both frequency and scale, we think it’s a great time to look at a few of the essentials that should be in place to keep your residents’ data safe and secure.

Currently, there are 44 million renters in the US. With the recent volatility in the economy, 60% of the US is actually living month-to-month. In an ideal world, renters would have a rent-to-income ratio around 30%, which for many is difficult. This is especially true if you live in more expensive cities like New York, where more than a third of renters pay more than 50% of their gross monthly income in rent, and that’s before you take into account an additional 5-10% of gross monthly income going toward ancillary fees.

When it comes to technology, there is a lot of excitement in the multifamily industry right now. More than ever, operators have the ability to optimize the performance of their portfolios while also providing prospects and residents with the experiences they demand.