Entrata Blog

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.

Managing utility costs for a multifamily property can be a huge headache. Whether you’re working with a ratio utility billing (RUB) formula, submetering, or an allocation method, dealing with local utility providers, navigating local regulatory issues, and collecting fees from non-compliant residents can consume huge amounts of a property manager’s time. The industry has responded by creating a handful of tools to manage the minutiae of utility billing and collection. Unfortunately, managers have never been able to alleviate all of the headaches associated with utility billing. Until now:Property Solutions’ ResidentUtility fits seamlessly into our suite of web-based property management solutions, and offers more functionality and efficiency than any other utility billing solution: Utility Cost Management: ResidentUtility can help properties recapture much of their utilities expenses and significantly boost the average property’s NOI. We work with you to develop and provide an NOI analysis and plan, and benchmark against that plan. Regulatory Compliance: Starting with bill acquisition and digitization, we work with you and local utility providers to help ensure regulatory compliance within each jurisdiction by embedding client rules that reduce sources of error and loss typically associated with utility billing. Data integration: ResidentUtility takes advantage of the robust architecture and integrations already built by Property Solutions for payment processing, resident portals, and other systems. This allows us to use data and functionality already in place to clear up traditional bottlenecks and reduce human error. Convergent Billing: Property Solutions’ best-of-breed data integration makes it possible for ResidentUtility to offer the most efficient convergent billing option available. Residents are provided with a single bill for rent and utilities charges and a variety of payment options. This functionality increases cash flow for your property by reducing rent delinquency by as much as 20 percent. Vacant Cost Recovery: Our system provides stand-alone billing for sub-metered utilities that residents fail to switch into their name before move-in, which can generate an additional $15,000 to $24,000 NOI per property. Best of all, questions about VCR bills can be directed to Property Solutions’ support team. With these features and additional functionality coming soon, getting started with ResidentUtility is one of the smartest decisions a property manager can make. For more information, check out our website or contact us at 877-826-9700 to schedule up a demo.

In this recurring blog series, Entrata will review the latest legislation for you to help ensure you are in the loop and don’t fall out of compliance and are prepared for upcoming deadlines. However it is important to note, the information contained herein is general in nature and is not intended to provide, or be a substitute for, legal analysis, legal advice, or consultation with appropriate legal counsel. You should not act or rely on information contained in this document without seeking appropriate professional advice.