Pub. 1 2016 Issue 4

17 ISSUE 4 2016 䌀吀䄀䄀 吀䠀䔀䌀伀一一䔀䌀吀䤀䌀唀吀䄀倀䄀刀吀䴀䔀一吀䄀匀匀伀䌀䤀䄀吀䤀伀一  In short, it is important that you o er tenants an online portal that has been designed to be friendly when someone is using a smart phone to access it. What can tenants use that portal to accomplish? • e most obvious use is to conduct business. People do not want to make the time to come to an o ce and sign papers when they decide to rent a unit. For that matter, they don’t want to pay rent in person, either. • An additional advantage of conducting business through a portal is that it should allow people to see a history of what has been done. ey can look at their rental and service histories. • Online portals also o er a convenient way to reserve public areas of the community such as a club room. • Residents should be able to make posts to a community bulletin board, and management should be able to com- municate with residents the same way. • If there are problems, a resident should also be able to make an online service request for help. • Online portals allow residents an easy way to coordinate package deliveries or sign up for utilities. One resident at the San Norterra apartments in Phoenix showed just how e ective an online community’s portal can be. Her name is Kathy Reid, and she wanted to put together a resident craft fair but wasn’t sure how much local interest there was. She got permission from management rst and then posted her event on the community’s resident portal. e results were incredibly successful. Other people got involved, including a skincare consultant and a jewelry designer. A nearby drugstore o ered to let people park cars in their lot. People o ered free advertising for the event. e result was a great deal of positive publicity for the apartment community. Kathy Reid said she was asked by more than one person how she liked living at the San Norterra complex. It’s obvious that portals can be a way for an apartment complex to gain positive publicity when there are public events, but the advantages don’t stop there. According to San Norterra’s com- munity manager, Kaycee Kisling, having an e ective portal also boosts resident retention. In addition, they are useful during emergencies. A rental company in California, the Sare-Regis Group, discovered that fact when two property res broke out that a ected their buildings. Sare-Regis Group has 57 di erent properties to manage. e Sare-Regis Group uses ActiveBuilding, which is a part of the RealPage family. RealPage, in turn, o ers property manage- ment software solutions for a variety of di erent kinds of rental companies: commercial, multifamily, single-family, and vacation rental housing. Management used the ActiveBuilding software when the res occurred to communicate with residents through a mass-messaging feature available through the portal. It was possible to tell residents what was going on regardless of where they were, and also to tell residents about the progress of the clean-up e orts afterward. You would think that satisfaction scores after a re within an apartment community would go down. at wasn’t the case. e regional manager, a man named Darrin Ketter, says that wasn’t the case. Satisfaction scores actually went up because residents appreciated being connected with everyone else throughout the community. ey also valued being told what was going on and what to expect. E N T POR TA L S