As a property manager, staying on top of your toes is crucial. After all, you have a lot of responsibility. One thing’s for sure — you never get bored! And yet, managing team members, renting units, and caring for tenants keep you busy. At times, it can seem overwhelming.

Thankfully, effectively balancing your responsibilities and thriving as a successful manager is possible. If your goal is to make apartment rental management easier, check out these five secrets.

1. Always be Available to Your Tenants

Part of having a management team is making yourself available to your tenants.

Yes, you're trying to rent new apartments, but that shouldn't get in the way of taking care of your existing tenants. They should be high on your priority list.

Follow Up as Soon as Possible

  • To be there for your residents:
  • Follow up on phone calls and emails as soon as possible.
  • Focus on emergencies and complaints first; you don't want unhappy residents.

Ensure you know how long it'll take to get back to them on your messaging system. (Responding within 24 hours is the best practice.)

Loop in Maintenance

Loop in your maintenance team as needed. A tenant may be experiencing kitchen drainage issues. In this type of scenario, maintenance should take care of it. Ideally, your residents should have a maintenance number they can call.

Sometimes emergencies happen in the middle of the night. While it's not ideal, your maintenance team should be available so an apartment won't flood.

If you respond to your tenants on time, you'll keep everyone happy and save yourself a lot of heartache!

2. Have Reliable Technology

A rental management team relies heavily on technology to keep them running. Having the best short term rental property management software helps automate many tedious tasks like collecting payments, sending out invoices, tracking occupancy, handling applications, generating reports, and more. It's up to you to ensure your computers are fully functional and your phones are reliable. You'd be surprised how quickly computers and phones become outdated. When you're working hard to rent out units and care for tenants, you need technology that won't fail.

It's in your best interest to keep tabs on equipment that either breaks or needs replacing. If you need replacements or upgrades, bring them up to the corporate office. Remember, it may take a while for things to get replaced. It really depends on the office's approval process.

3. Create a Dream Team

Focus on building an excellent team where everyone is on the same page. Every team member should be aware of their responsibilities. And everyone should work hard to get along, even if a personality clash exists.

No team is perfect, but you can accomplish a lot by creating a "dream team."

Set Some Ground Rules

Set some ground rules so everyone knows what they're in charge of while working. It doesn't matter if there is competition between leasing consultants. In some cases, leasing consultants may try to rent more units than others. Regardless of the competitive nature of consultants, make sure they're working together.

Weekly Meetings

Consider setting up weekly meetings to check in with everyone. A manager and team members should be on the same page. If you're not, that's when conflict and accidents take place. You want to avoid that happening when running a successful management office's up to you and your team.

Mistakes will still happen from time to time. But you'll find fewer mishaps by working hard to become a stellar team.

4. Streamline Everything

There are many things you can do to streamline everything. Here are a few ways you can ensure things run smoothly:
  • Have Property Management Software like Appfolio and Buildium.
  • Create a Tenant Portal
  • Decide how best to communicate with tenants.
  • Decide on your apartment marketing plan.
  • Set up property management accounting software.
Your corporate office should provide software. If there are things they don’t have, recommend them to them.

A tenant portal is an excellent way for everyone to keep a current log of who they've contacted. Keeping everything up to date must be everyone's top priority.

You want to avoid surprises if a consultant forgets to log something into the portal. Streamlining everything will prevent this from taking place.

Decide on best practices on how to communicate with your tenants. Even if you're using smartphones and email, have a process.

5. Maintain a Positive Attitude

It goes without saying that having a positive attitude is the key to your success. You're less likely to keep current residents if you become a grumpy management team. And you'll have a more challenging time renting out new units.

Make it your goal to stay positive no matter the circumstances. You can only please some, especially disgruntled residents. However, focusing on the good instead of the bad will get you through rough patches.

Conclusion

Having a competent management team will ensure things go as smoothly as possible. While renting units should be your priority, don't neglect existing tenants. Remember, you are the glue that holds everything together!

It takes work and dedication to keep things going well regarding rental management. But your hard work will pay off in the end!