If you’re like most property managers, your work day is stuck in the 20th century. Rent checks are collected through a metal drop box. Brochures sit idly by outside of your office. Your web site consists of one page with a phone number, e-mail address and a few photos. Enough paperwork is collecting in your office to create a fire hazard.

I want to point out six things that property managers can really master in the 21st century, thanks to the latest property management software systems.

Managing Leads to New Tenants

According to Apartment Internet Marketing, 46% of apartment prospects inquire about a property after normal 9 AM to 5 PM office hours.

How are you currently tracking these? Through e-mail? Scrolling through your Caller ID to check missed calls? Do you even know how effective your current advertising methods are?

Fortunately, many property management software applications will collect and organize your leads from all sources, even after you’re out of the office. Rent Manager is one company that is integrating marketing with it’s property management software.

A modern property management application can:

• Collect call information from prospects inquiring after hours
• Respond automatically via e-mail to internet prospects
• Track e-mail open rates so you can follow up with those who haven’t seen your response
• Broadcast e-mails to the leads you’ve collected but haven’t converted
• Log the source of leads to your web site (Craigslist.org, Apartments.com, etc)
• Track leads from offline sources through the use of specific phone numbers
• Integrate with your online advertising methods (pay-per-click, banners ads, etc.)

In our opinion, this is the wave of the future in property management software. With more and more people every day going to the internet to look for properties, integration of web services with your property management software will be the difference between surviving and thriving. Connecting with Your Tenants

Don’t be that property manager on ApartmentRatings.com whose tenants claim is never around.

Running your office on one of the leading property management software applications will allow you to:

• Generate e-mail blasts to your tenants and rental owners
• Create community forums to discuss important topics and feedback
• Manage online calendars of events and important dates

In short, your property management software becomes your communication hub between you, your tenants and your rental owners. There’s no need to combine three of four different, separate services that don’t talk to each other. Moreover, you’ll be present without having to knock on every door.

Automation of Regular Tasks

If the rent deadline has passed and a tenant has not paid their rent yet, what do you do?

Typically, you either call them on the phone or drop off a notice at their door. That’s too much manual effort. Your property management system should email them an alert or late rent notice immediately. No need for you to type, print, mail or deliver.

Property management software can even ease the pain during one of the most stressful times of the year – tax season. Buildium’s property management software will automatically generate 1099 tax forms for vendors and rental owners and even file them electronically to the IRS. All of this is done from within the software itself.

The advantages of automation are clear: more time to focus on more important tasks (like finding leads), fewer mistakes and an overall higher level of efficiency.

Others tasks that have been automated by property management software are:

• Rent increases
• CAM charges
• Preventative maintenance scheduling
• Lease expiration notices
• Tenant log in to view account details

Many of your automated notices to tenants can be emailed directly from the property management software or even sent to mobile phones.

Advertising with Popular Web Sites

Put yourself in the shoes of a prospective tenant. Where are you going to look first for a new apartment or home? More than likely, you’re going to start your search at Craigslist or another website.

Property management software company Appfolio integrates the ability to post listings to Craigslist directly into its software, making posting vacancies to the hugely popular web site that much easier.

Appfolio uses the information you’ve already entered and are managing about your properties and ports that information directly to Craigslist. No double entry and no time wasted managing your Craigslist account separately.

And it’s not just about making it easy to post to Craigslist. Appfolio allows you to design a custom template (pictured right) that makes your Craigslist posts stand out among the typical, text-only ads.

Building a Web Site that Integrates with Your Software

If you can count the number of pages on your web site on one hand, chances are it’s not doing much to help keep your occupancy rate high. You need more than a digital business card. What you need is a web site that appeals to prospects, tenants and property owners alike.

A good number of property management software systems out there give you the option to build a slick, fully functional web site that integrates directly with their software.

Property Ware and Rentec Direct are a few of the many property management software suites that give you this build-a-web-site option in addition to their other property management software services. They’ll build a fully customizable web site with all of the features you need.

Advantages of customizable property management web sites include:

• No coding or site maintenance is need on your part
• Installation is quick and painless
• They’ll manage your domain name
• Web site analytics built into the software
• Built in forms increase your lead generation
• All of this is integrated directly with the property management software

Instead of having one company handle your web site design and hosting and another handle your property management software needs, why not have one company do both?

Going Green

Eco-conscious tenants are increasingly concerned with the environmental footprint of their home, even if they are a tenant rather than an owner.

Here’s a list of ways that property management software helps property managers save energy and save paper:

• Storing documents digitally, resulting in fewer lost documents and less paper
• E-mailing renter’s statements at their request instead of printing out paper statements
• Scan renter’s checks and upload them electronically
• Web-based property management eliminates the in-house server, saving energy

Going green isn’t just about saving energy and trees. It also helps you increase your efficiency:

• Digital document storage cuts the time searching for documents dramatically when you can type in a search instead of rummaging through a massive file cabinet
• E-mailing out monthly statement’s is quite a bit quicker than printing, stuffing envelopes and making the rounds on your property dropping off statements
• Imagine eliminating those weekly, sometimes daily, trips to the bank when you can scan and uploading a renter’s check from your desk
• Web-based property management software virtually eliminates IT headaches (and time spent dealing with those headaches) because your software vendor hosts the software on their own servers

If you do take these energy saving measures and advertise them, you’ll attract more customers. And depending on the extent of the “greening” of your properties, you’ll be able to charge more in rent too.

What else does property management software help you do better? What things do you want your property management to take care of that it currently doesn’t?

(Chris Thorman is social media manager at Software Advice. He can be reached at 512-364-0118 or chris@softwareadvice.com)

A few new developments in the sustainability world have come to pass since my last note.

One week ago, Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass) launched a campaign for their climate bill. The purpose of the “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act,” which, incidentally, does not include the word “climate” in its title, is “to create energy jobs, promote energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy.”

While this proposal incorporates every industry, it is important to point out that green collar jobs are, in fact, on the rise within the building industry. A certain level of green consciousness—which seems to be higher than that of the average Joe—has come to pass within the industry that has long been blamed for the majority of the nation’s carbon emissions.

On another note, Google recently released a PowerMeter, which was created as a free electricity usage monitoring tool for utilities and consumers. As the Frequently Asked Questions site explains, Google built the tool to provide information to consumers.

This idea of monitoring one’s energy usage is certainly not a new one. In a recent MHN post, Dimitris Kapsis, vice president of energy management solutions at American Utility Management, discusses the importance of performing facilities audits in multifamily buildings.

Of course, monitoring energy and water consumption at a multifamily community is much different—and I assume much more difficult—than it would be at a single-family home, but the concept is the same. Everyone needs to play a role in managing their use of the earth’s national resources. The question is, how much of a role should, and can, government play in mandating our use? Have we gotten to the point where we have spread our resources so thin that the only way to resolve the issue is to have our resource use regulated?

What do you think? How much legislation needs to be introduced—and/or passed—for everyone to understand the importance of preserving our earth? Share your thoughts. Email me at ESchnitzer@multi-housingnews.com or leave your comments here.

(Erika Schnitzer is Associate Editor at MHN).

Many investors are seeking to take advantage of the downturn (now supposedly coming to an end) to pounce on distressed multifamily commercial real estate opportunities.

Little wonder that the GreenPearl Events’s Distressed Real Estate Summit held in New York last week far exceeded the organizer’s expectations. The day-long event was attended by over 700 industry professionals.

Word at the conference is that if you expect a fire sale of distressed properties, such as the opportunities created by the RTC in the early-1990s, this is not the time. Banks are not letting go of their distressed assets at bottom-feeder prices or even releasing properties en masse necessarily.

If anything, banks are trying to extend loans as much as possible, and holding on to REOs for better prices down the road. As one commentator suggested, their attitude is, why get 50 cents on the dollar today if you can hold the asset longer and get 80 cents on the dollar next year or later? Furthermore, because many banks are healthier (remember the government’s capital infusion into the banks?), they can afford to wait it out.

Where they hold distressed assets, the government has the same approach. The FDIC has closed many institutions—though nowhere as many as in the late-1980s, early-1990s, noted Michael Sher, managing director, at RSM McGladrey, on one panel. But Sher said that the FDIC has a very structured approach in disposing of the real estate assets of the banks: They do not want to dump the assets at one go and destroy prices.

In response to a question posed by Carolyn Pianin, the panel moderator and senior consultant at Focus Management Group, Sher gave several specific suggestions as to where investors can look for opportunities. The handful of financial advisors helping FDIC sell real estate assets include PNC Midland (acquisition, development and construction CRE loans) and KBW Bank (acquisition, development and construction residential loans).

David M. Frank, CEO of the Merrill Group of Cos. LLC, advised investors to contact and build relationships with asset advisory firms, as they are in contact with owners of the properties. He also said that receivers are the first in play even before the servicer handles the asset as REO. “Go to lunch, play golf with them,” he said.

(Keat Foong is Executive Editor of Multi-Housing News. She can be reached at KFoong@multi-housingnews.com)

New York City is flooded with some major events this week: the U.N. General Assembly, the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative and Climate Week N.Y.C., which falls just a few months before the international climate meeting slated to take place in Copenhagen this winter.

At a meeting at the U.N. on Tuesday, President Barack Obama, addressing world dignitaries, noted that though some progress has been made in the fight to combat climate change, there is much more work to be done.

The President called on all nations to work together to face the global crisis. “Difficulty is no excuse for complacency. Unease is no excuse for inaction,” he said. “Each of us must do what we can when we can to grow our economies without endangering our planet – and we must all do it together.”

For a while now, much of the burden of reducing greenhouse gas emissions has been placed on those in the building industry. But the industry has also made some truly great advances in making our buildings healthier and more sustainable.

There are still those, however, who have not yet embraced the concept of building green. Perhaps it is due to finances, a lack of education about the benefits—whatever the reason, everyone, in the industry, or outside it, must come together to figure out the best means possible to make our lives, and the future, a little bit greener.

The President has called on nations to work together to fight the fight. It seems to me that many in the industry are already doing so. Is it possible that the world could learn a lesson or two from our buildings?

What do you think? How does the multifamily industry—or any building sector, for that matter—already work together to make our lives more sustainable? Or do you disagree—is there more that can be done within the industry to bring people together and take a more integrated building approach?

Share your thoughts. Email me at Erika.Schnitzer@nielsen.com, or leave your comments here for others to view and learn from.

(Erika Schnitzer is Associate Editor at Multi-Housing News.)

 Does it matter how green your buildings are if the people responsible for their daily operations don’t know how to properly maintain their sustainable lifestyle?

In New York City, Urban Green (the city’s chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council) and 32BJ, a building service workers union, have launched a plan to train 1,000 green building superintendents this year.

According to the program’s website, the group of managers currently undergoing training (within the first two courses) represent 55 buildings, or 4,600 apartments throughout the city, ranging in age from one to 120 years old.

The program is designed to prioritize skills to reduce energy use within a building and train supers in all aspects of green building operations and maintenance.

What do you think? Is this a feasible program? Should other cities and localities institute similar programs? How important is education when it comes to your building’s daily operations?

Share your thoughts. Email me at Erika.Schnitzer@nielsen.com

 Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with some of the industry’s most green-oriented executives, whom MHN had invited to judge our Second Annual Green Initiative Awards.

Needless to say, it was quite an experience to get together with a group of four individuals who are so completely devoted to sustainability that, in at least one instance, they have actually spearheaded the movement. (And let me add that I learned quite a bit when some heated debates broke out.)

In reviewing the submissions, the panel of judges—which included Anthony Morena, principal of The REDD (Real Estate Design & Development) Group; Dana Bourland, vice president of green initiatives for Enterprise Community Partners; Andy Padian, vice president of energy initiatives for the Community Preservation Corporation (CPC); and Robert Roth, Esq., president and founder of Green Envy Development—raised a number of rather interesting points.

Though I’ve heard it before in numerous interviews regarding a variety of topics, the panel noted the importance of water conservation, as “water becomes the new oil,” that is, that water is sure to become the resource over which wars are fought.

Since this is not the first time I’ve heard this statement made, it really got me thinking—how much water does each of us waste in our daily lives? What are some seemingly basic steps that each of us can, and should, take to ensure water does not become such a hot-button issue? In addition to the seemingly ubiquitous low-flow fixtures, what should building owners and operators do to make their buildings—and residents—consume less water? With all the new advances in technology, it would appear that the answer is an obvious one—but is it?

Share your thoughts. Email me at Erika.Schnitzer@nielsen.com

 According to McKinsey & Co.’s recent report, “Unlocking Energy Efficiency in the U.S. Economy,” investing in energy-efficient buildings now will lead to $1.2 trillion in savings, as well as reduce the nation’s energy consumption by 23 percent, by 2020.

“Green building can stimulate the economy at a level one and a half times larger than the federal stimulus bill,” says Rick Fedrizzi, president, CEO and founding chairman of the USGBC, one of the 12 sponsors of the report.  “By leveraging existing green building approaches, like LEED, which is rooted in holistic and integrated design, we have the ability and capacity now to address multiple barriers, and thus generate additional resource efficiencies and cost savings.”

The report points out the importance of “whole-building design,” which considers optimizing the building’s design for the local environment, minimizing energy consumption, pursuing holistic design and improving design and installation practices.

Many multifamily developers and architects who I have talked to recently have acknowledged these opportunities, at least to some extent. Even if their buildings aren’t certified by any particular standard, these methods are certainly considered at some point in the building process, even if it’s stemming from a financial, rather than a sustainable, motivation.

The problem with multi-housing developments, it seems, is that not all residents understand and employ green methods in their lives. While you can’t force your residents to embrace a sustainable lifestyle, you can certainly give them the tools they need to understand what this means. Because even if you build to the highest of green standards, it won’t be nearly as effective as you had hoped if the end user does not utilize these tools.

As operators, you need to educate your residents about what it means to live in a green building. (As a side note, I recently visited a LEED Silver multifamily community as a prospective renter. Not once did the leasing agent describe a single green benefit—he didn’t even mention the solar roof panels!—to me. Is this because he didn’t think I’d care or I wouldn’t deem it important to my decision?)

Why not promote your green features? (You never know who will be visiting your site and their knowledge of green building!) And when your prospect decides to choose you—maybe because of those green features you forgot to highlight—make sure you educate him about living in a green building and the role he can play in furthering your building’s, and your company’s, green initiatives. Because you’re just one piece of the green puzzle—everyone needs to be involved.

What do you think? Should green features be highlighted on a tour of your building? How much education do you provide your renters about living a green lifestyle, whether your building is certified or not? What steps are you taking to invest in energy efficiency in your buildings today?

Share your thoughts. Email me at Erika.Schnitzer@nielsen.com.

 What do Bentley Prince Street’s Cool Carpet, Arbor Contract Carpet,
WeatherTRAK Smart Water Management by HydroPoint Data Systems Inc.,
Post Properties’ EcoActive program, The Tower Companies’ “Beyond Green”
program and Forest City’s “Roadmap to Intrinsic Sustainability” have in
common?

They were all winners of MHN’s 2008 Green Initiative Awards! (Click here for details about last year’s winners.)

With sustainability an increasingly “hot,” albeit important, topic,
more and more companies are paving the way for a greener future.
Whether it’s a recycled-content carpet, technology that creates a
rational irrigation schedule based on the landscape or a corporate
initiative pledging a company’s carbon neutrality, any eco-friendly
step you can take to make your surroundings that much greener is surely
a step in the right direction.

For more information on “the truth about green business,” click here for MHN’s interview with Gil Friend, the man who wrote the book on the topic.

Think you have what it takes to be this year’s winner? Enter our
Green Initiative Awards to find out. This year we will be judging
entries against one another of the same level of involvement, so don’t
be shy, even if you’re just beginning! We understand the importance of
taking that first step and we applaud anyone who recognizes the
importance of sustainability in their business.

For more information on our awards program, click here or else click here to download the entry form directly.

If you have any questions, please email me at Erika.Schnitzer@nielsen.com.

 The House of Representatives recently passed energy and climate legislation that would include a number of provisions for green building incentives. The Waxman-Markey bill, otherwise known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2454), would include such things as:

-A building retrofit program, which would include standards for both residential and nonresidential buildings;
-A building energy performance labeling program, which would encourage both owners and occupants to learn about building energy performance;
-Established percentage targets for energy use reductions in new residential and commercial buildings;
-The GREEN (Green Resources for Energy Efficient Neighborhoods) Act, which includes provisions related to residential energy efficiency.

For a detailed summary of the legislation, as established by the USGBC, click here.

NMHC has analyzed the apartment-related provisions in the bill, noting “unrealistic code mandates,” “federal cause of action against property owners,” ‘building energy usage labeling requirements,” and “renewable energy requirements” as just some of the potential problems multifamily firms could face if the bill is passed into law.

In the analysis, NMHC points out, “code-based conservation proposals put extreme pressure on apartment firms to invest in expensive upgrades without significantly improving overall building energy performance.” As the Council observes, most of the energy used in multi-housing is not covered by the legislation, so meeting the levels would require not only upgrades to the building envelope and HVAC systems but also lighting, appliances, etc.

Click here for NMHC’s full analysis.

What do you think? Does this appear to be a “one size fits all” legislation that, once again, does not take multifamily buildings into account as a special case? Or is it a start in the right direction?

Share your thoughts. Email me at Erika.Schnitzer@nielsen.com.

 With gas prices steadily on the rise once again, developers and architects alike are looking more closely at alternatives to new construction in the suburbs. The antidote to sprawl, urban infill development has served as a catalyst for the urban revitalization process nationwide.

Part of this process involves a closer examination of transit-oriented development. While the easy solution would be to simply place housing near public transportation, many urban areas are lacking in resources and funds. Around the country, the industry is asking how the market will affect the creation of new transit options that are meant to enable further transit-oriented development.

Also garnering interest is the adaptive reuse of existing—sometimes even historic—buildings from commercial to residential. Such projects are just one more example of building greener; as Patrick Turner, the developer of Silo Point in Baltimore, notes, adaptive reuse projects are often greener than the greenest of new projects, as reusing an existing building is inherently environmentally friendly. But these projects tend to come with their own set of challenges, often forcing project teams to weigh the costs against the benefits.

Take, for example, Turner’s project—an old grain elevator that was converted into a mixed-use community with 228 luxury condos. The development team not only had to convince the city to rezone the site so it could be converted into a residential use, but they also had to deal with myriad physical constraints associated with the old industrial site. (Click here for MHN’s article)

With similar challenges a concern in other adaptive reuse developments, how will the credit crisis even further impact multi-housing and mixed-use projects on the boards?

At Multi-Housing World, join a panel of architects, including Rick Hammann, managing principal of WDG Architecture; Mark Humphreys, CEO of Humphreys & Partners Architects LP; and Randy Gerner, principal at GKV Architects PC, for a discussion of the future of urban infill.

In a session entitled, “Repurposing the Urban Landscape: Infill Case Studies,” the panel will discuss where the upcoming opportunities are, how you can tap into public/private partnerships, and what the hottest design trends are that can help urban infill projects blend into the existing urban fabric while also ensuring maximum lease-ups

And don’t forget—you can earn one AIA HSW/SD credit by attending this course.

See you in San Diego, September 29-October 1!

Click here to see the full Multi-Housing World 2009 Leadership Summit conference schedule. Registration is now open.

(Erika Schnitzer is Associate Editor at Multi-Housing News. She can be reached at Erika.Schnitzer@nielsen.com)