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Managing residential properties – or property management – can be a complex and challenging field, as it involves balancing the needs and expectations of multiple parties, including property owners, tenants, and local authorities. Here are common challenges property managers face.
4 Core Challenges in Property Management
Operational Costs
Repair and maintenance costs account for an eighth of annual rental income, and those costs are rising fast – by almost 8% early eighth of annual rental income, and those costs are rising fast – by almost 8% year on year. But why is that?
- Firstly, follow-up dispatch rates are at around 25% and rising.
- Second is the high cost of ‘No Fault Found’ dispatches – all those needless dispatches that could have been resolved without a home visit.
- Call volume is a critical KPI in customer service. The extra workload on agents, many working from home, is creating large case backlogs that are more expensive to resolve the longer they are left.
- Evolving Health & Safety thresholds are much higher too and ensuring ongoing compliance represents a huge cost implication.
The Visual Gap
When the tenant has an issue, they call customer service. The trouble is, they’re looking at the equipment they can barely describe, while on the other end of the line, the agent is looking at a CRM. They’re flying blind.
They begin a long, frustrating dialogue that creates high customer effort, a poor tenant experience, and high labor intensity. It also pushes up costs due to unnecessary dispatches and repeat calls.
The Knowledge Gap
The second main challenge is the knowledge gap – the difficulty of accessing the right information in the field. The growing dependency on junior and outsourced workers is a critical problem that causes longer site visits and more follow-up visits.
- Engineers often struggle to find the right information from textual knowledge bases in the field. The last thing they want to do is read a complex article, especially if they’re using a small screen.
- There’s also the pressure placed on remote experts and supervisors with so many inexperienced engineers reaching out for advice. That leads to workflow bottlenecks and delayed service completion
- Then there’s the problem of identifying engineers who’ve experienced the same issue affecting the same equipment before.
Siloed Systems
The third challenge is segregation between departments which work often with different systems.
That causes serious inconsistencies in how they communicate with tenants, leading to poor customer experience. Organizations often struggle to get a 360-degree view of each household, which makes effective, one-to-one communication with each resident difficult and leads to inconsistent interactions. Employees in different departments need to deliver personalized and consistent messaging by having the same data at their fingertips.
What the Future Holds for Property Managers
In light of the challenges listed above, the field of property management is likely to continue evolving in the future, and new technologies and approaches may emerge that change the way property managers work. Certain trends that may shape the future of property management include the demand for environmentally friendly practices leading to energy efficiency and other sustainability measures, economic and demographic changes, and laws and regulations, which will impact the work and nature of property managers. Above all, emerging management software and other technologies such as remote visual assistance are becoming more prevalent, helping property managers to streamline their workflows and improve operational efficiency.
