Smart Solutions Reshaping Large Apartment Property Management

Property management practices, especially for large apartment blocks, gated communities and holiday homes, increasingly resemble those of major office buildings. They see a dedicated team in action to handle the daily requests and needs of tenants, and the maintenance and security of buildings, with a remote contracted management team to oversee longer-term plans or issues. 

Whatever the apartment type, typically there is a manager or agent in charge of handling the needs of a residents’ management company. 

Their job is to operate the daily oversight of the building(s), typically with a team of maintenance and security contractors. They also perform property financial activities on behalf of the owner, such as maintaining occupancy, supporting new tenants and smoothly moving out those leaving. That can extend to marketing the property, preparing for capital works, and supporting residents during environmental disasters or other risks. 

The property manager saves time for rental building and apartment owners, tenants and contractors, ensuring issues are dealt with promptly, efficiently and within budget. Making the overall organization and management more efficient, they increasingly use smart technology to improve how large apartments are operated. 

Smart Solutions in Big Properties

Smart solutions are transforming how large apartment blocks are managed, using technology to support residents and stakeholders with highly efficient systems that minimize damage or cost and speed up response times to any issue. 

Increasingly, digital systems within properties and communal areas include smart thermostats to efficiently control the HVAC system and room temperatures. Deeper in residential areas and plant rooms, gas and water sensors can detect leaks and help get maintenance to fix the problem before costs rise and tenants become unhappy. 

For properties with elderly residents, smart fall alarms, communication systems and other features can be added to ensure their comfort and safety. While in communal areas, smart locks, access control systems and security cameras can maintain order, and keep unwanted people out. 

Even in less-considered areas, smart technology is making an appearance. With the huge rise in home shopping and parcel deliveries, mail areas have become congested and replaced by mail rooms. These can be equipped with a mailroom management system to record and track parcel and post deliveries. 

Smart Technology Delivers Big Savings

For management, the smart technology reduces large amounts of information and complex processes to a dashboard of urgent issues and how they are being handled. The collection of smart tools working in harmony helps eliminate many of the repetitive management tasks, and streamline management and maintenance operations. 

Problems with properties can be automatically scheduled for inspection and repair, with everyone knowing when the repair technicians will be onsite, reducing frustration and repeating “are they here yet?” calls from all sides. 

On the financial side, digital management of leases, rent, costs and other expenses can automate these time-sucking processes and highlight non-payment issues earlier than traditional methods. 

Other benefits come in the form of sustainability savings, with low-power systems conserving energy, water and reducing waste. Helping an apartment block become a better environmental steward makes it more attractive to younger residents who expect the latest smart technology (beyond fast Wi-Fi and cable) in their homes. 

Tracking Tenant and Owner Satisfaction

Property management applications also support the increasingly important insights like occupant and owner happiness (aka customer satisfaction). 

Satisfaction scores are a major part of modern life, from service providers and retailers to airlines and now property management. Management companies or associations that can collect and categorize this data can show the value that tenants get from them, and how happy they are at a broad level, with room for individual success stories.  

Similarly, management tools can track maintenance response and repairs, identifying common or repetitive problems, and helping the management team come up with a plan to eliminate them. They can also forecast long-term maintenance budgets, and likely failures across properties (from HVACs to faucets) using predictive analytics. 

Add in applications that can monitor energy usage trends, savings from solar power or battery systems, across units and buildings, and every management company can become a highly smart business. One that is capable of moving to better energy providers or evolving their own power grid to reduce reliance on increasingly creaky power systems.

The Future of Smart Buildings

Pretty much all buildings, from downtown Bridgetown to the heights of Dallas’s latest towers to London’s luxury flats use smart tech within the property. And smart management systems in the concierge suite, back office or on the dashboards of massive commercial landlords support property decisions. 

Soon, every aspect will be measured constantly, every security sensor tracked by AI, and long-term business goals met by dynamic refinement of pricing, maintenance and rents. This change is something all property investors, construction firms and renters should get used to as the property market becomes a more-measured business, leaving less to chance, and improving the overall customer service for every business and resident up and down the financial chain. 

Learning about this technology now, and mastering it will help any property professional be better placed to deal with it as it comes on-stream in properties large and small.