Having a daredevil walk across your property 60 stories above the ground on a cable three-quarters of an inch wide in front of a live international television audience probably isn’t the typical day in the life of a property manager. But that is what happened on Nov. 2, when famed aerialist Nik Wallenda successfully walked – back and forth – across the 896-unit Marina Towers in Chicago.
The condominium wasn’t responsible for the liability insurance, which was covered by the promoters of the event, or all of the necessary engineering and safety issues. Nevertheless, property manager Bill O’Leary did have a lot of other things to worry about, like the disruption to the 1,400 residents and the wear and tear on the building, he told the Institute for Real Estate Management’s blog.
O’Leary made sure that residents were kept informed throughout the process, and that day-to-day operations of the building were not affected, despite 3,100 visitors to the building. Additional security was also required to protect residents and guests, plus crowd control around the building.
O’Leary said he was impressed by the coordination of all the participants, which involved the City of Chicago, U.S. Homeland Security, the Coast Guard, the Wallenda team, and the television networks.
“What you learn from an event like this is how to coordinate hundreds of people with different functions to work as a team to make it happen successfully,” O’Leary said.
Alas, managing a residential property like a condominium, or any other commercial property, is a lot more mundane, and less glamorous, than the Wallenda stunt. Nevertheless, there are hundreds of things to do: invoices to send out, payments to collect, work orders to send out and track, not to mention the myriad complaints and requests from individual tenants. Maybe not death-defying tasks, but critical all the same.
A lot of these chores can be automated, yet a surprising number of property managers still do it the old-fashioned way. A recent survey found that more than half of property managers use manual methods such as Microsoft Excel or even a paper log to manage their properties, while nearly 10 percent currently don’t have any method in place. Only about a third currently use property management software.
Of the many on the market, SKYLINE Property Management Solution for Residential and Multi- Family Properties is one of the best. SKYLINE is used by thousands of residential property managers and owners to streamline operations and reporting in order to control operational and maintenance costs and improve and control cash flow from operations.
The payoff? Increased bottom-line profits, higher property values and more satisfied tenants.
SKYLINE’s Tenant Relations Management (TRM) module would have come in handy for something like the Wallenda event. You can create a detailed list of who entered an event and who is responsible for next action steps and track and manage all past, present and future tenant interactions. All tenant interactions are automatically date and time stamped. You also automatically receive an e-mail or SKYLINE Alert for all future events.
The SKYLINE Electronic Tenant module helps you manage and track correspondence with residents, like sending out rent statements, late notices and informational notices.
But SKYLINE software is only part of the package. Anton works with your team to evaluate your current processes and future needs to design an end-to-end residential property management solution. We can strategize and build your SKYLINE solution based on your precise needs so you are able to make measurable improvements across all areas of operations and eliminate time- consuming tasks. Then we further protect your investment by backing you with years of real estate experience, expert training and efficient support.