by Joy Cho
Using Real Estate Technology to Reduce Expenses and Maximize Profit from Your Residential Rental Properties
Have you ever wished you could streamline your property management processes, reduce your rental property operating expenses, and save yourself time, all while maximizing income from your properties? With the right technology, you can do exactly that.
If you own or operate multiple residential rental properties, you may well find yourself snowed under with systems like Excel, QuickBooks, or even—dare we say—filing cabinets filled with stacks of paperwork.
If this sounds familiar, now might be the time to consider adding some appropriate real estate technology into your operations processes. This can speed things up and allow you to gain greater insights. You never know—it might even help you close your next deal more quickly.
Read on to learn more about MRI Software’s property management software and how it can help you.
What Are the Most Common Rental Property Operating Expenses?
When it comes to owning or operating a residential rental property, some expenses are expected and must be planned for.
The first expense to consider is the overhead of staff costs, such as salaries and benefits. This is particularly relevant if you have leasing offices (such as in the case of multifamily properties) from which your properties are rented and managed. Your staff costs should be the first line item in any budget.
Second only to staff costs is maintenance costs. You will need to undertake both proactive and reactive maintenance on your properties. Proactive maintenance keeps things running smoothly and keeps your property in top condition to prevent problems down the line, while reactive maintenance responds to problems (such as a burst pipe or faulty boiler) as they happen. You’ll need to factor in the costs of supplies and labor as well as tracking, budgeting, and anticipatory planning for this maintenance.
When you’re managing properties, it’s always a good idea to maintain a contingency fund. This is money that you have set aside “just in case,” giving you peace of mind. Even with proactive and ongoing maintenance, there are bound to be some surprises. Keeping a contingency fund means that all your assets are not tied into the property, reducing risk and giving you cash to fall back on if you need it.
Finally, if you are not the sole owner of the property (or are looking to expand your property management enterprise), you will need to factor in reporting and accounting fees. These can add up surprisingly quickly.
Many of these tasks can be completed in-house if you have a team with the right knowledge and expertise. But if you’re not using a dedicated real estate software system, it is likely to be time-consuming and laborious. You will need to allow plenty of time to pull the numbers, sort the data, format your results, and create usable reports from the raw information.
What Is MRI Property Management Software, and How Can It Help?
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all those potential expenses and things you have to manage, don’t panic! The right software tool can help you immensely. Fortunately, tools like MRI property management software exist precisely to make your job easier.
Property management software allows you to simplify, streamline, and automate many of the essential tasks that come with managing a property (or multiple properties, such as in the case of multifamily units).
MRI offers a comprehensive suite of real estate software solutions that can help you with managing every aspect of your residential property. It offers features to help you market your properties to prospective residents, improve the occupancy rate of all your units, automate numerous phases of the leasing process, and communicate with your tenants quickly and efficiently. MRI also allows you to gain detailed data about your property’s performance that you can transform into actionable insights or detailed reports.
Here are a few key ways that MRI property management software can help you reduce expenses and maximize your profits from your rental properties.
Keep on Top of Requests and Repairs
A good real estate software system like MRI gives you an easy way to track tenant requests, necessary repairs, and routine maintenance schedules. By keeping on top of these, you ensure that your property remains in prime condition. Missing a small problem can create a big problem later, and missed routine maintenance can soon add up and cause issues.
In addition, keeping on top of tenant requests as they come in helps to keep your tenants happy. This means they will be far more inclined to remain in the property over the long term. With the right software, you can automatically update residents on the status of their maintenance requests, and keep track of your vendors as well. By being responsive and proactive, you will ensure that you retain a long-term and mutually beneficial relationship.
Speed Up Onboarding, Offboarding, and Inspections
One of the most time-consuming aspects of running a residential real estate business is managing the point at which tenants move in or move out of a property. MRI Software allows you to automate many aspects of the move-in and move-out processes, saving you time and money and ensuring a positive experience for your tenants.
You may also carry out routine mid-tenancy inspections on your properties to ensure that tenants are taking care of your investment. MRI software allows you to transition away from cumbersome and time-consuming paper-based inspection processes and switch over to a digital system instead.
This ensures a more thorough and comprehensive approach and, if you manage multiple units, ensures that they are all inspected using the same systems and parameters. You can also schedule inspections automatically at whatever frequency you choose.
Offer Self-Service Options
By using a digital-first system like MRI Software for your real estate business, you can save your team time by offering self-service options to your stakeholders. For example, you can allow your tenants to pay their rent and fees, request services, book amenities, and more, all without the need for direct staff involvement.
You can also allow other stakeholders, such as vendors and suppliers, to carry out many day-to-day processes online without assistance from your team. It’s entirely possible that you can keep running with a lean team if you employ these software solutions.
Eliminating Paper Records
Between contracts, invoices, financial documents, purchase orders, and more, running a real estate business often involves a lot of paperwork. But what if you could eliminate much or even all of that need for paper?
Many of us took our businesses online during the pandemic and realized that we did not need to be using anywhere near as many paper documents. But if you still have some lingering, it’s time to digitize. MRI real estate software allows you to bring your accounts payable systems, contracts, payment processing, and reporting online.
More Advanced and Accurate Financial Forecasting
With a system like MRI, you can create detailed and highly accurate budgets, forecasts, and other financial reports. This gives you clear insight into the financial health and performance of both individual units and your overall business. You can use this data to make predictions, make better business decisions, and take steps to maximize your revenue and profit in future years.
Need a Little Extra Support?
Hopefully this article has shown you just some of the many ways you can reduce expenses and maximize profit from your residential rental property by using the right real estate software. If you’re ready to get started, we can help.
Whether you’re implementing real estate software like the MRI property management suite for the first time or you need a little extra support to get the most out of it, our friendly team is here to help. Drop us a line, and we will be pleased to have a no-obligation chat about the ways we can work together.
Are you ready to streamline your processes, save time, save money, and increase your profitability? You know what to do!
About the Author
Joy Cho
Joy brings over 22 years of real estate development and property management knowledge and experience to the REdirect team. Since 2003, Joy has been working with MRI software and focuses on software …