CEO and Cofounder of Leonardo247, an operations and maintenance platform for automating policies, tasks & workflows in apartment operations.
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Providing housing to the more than 100 million Americans living in apartments, nursing homes, low-income housing and other rental properties has never been as straightforward as people outside of the industry might assume. Challenges surrounding compliance with housing laws, municipal codes, preventative maintenance and managing overall operational risks have always served as potential landmines to investment returns. However, property managers now have an entirely new spate of responsibilities and burdens due to Covid-19. They must preserve the health and safety of not just their residents but also the site employees.
This new high-stakes role of developing and complying with Covid-19 safety protocols includes the obvious need to more closely track and document cleaning protocols, employee temperature checks and potential onsite outbreaks. Landlords also must manage packages and amenities and show units in contactless environments, all of which pose an additional burden to owners who are already unable to collect rent in many cases. The growing work-from-home trend adds more requirements as residents demand high-speed internet and, in some cases, a socially distanced co-working space on-premise but outside of their own apartments.
Multifamily real estate is no longer just a place to live; it must be a proven refuge from the world-at-large while, at the same time, supporting full-time workers like never before.
The Different Ways Real Estate Leaders Can Use Proptech
Many proptech providers have stepped up to bridge the gap to meet the needs in the market. Here are some of the options for multifamily real estate leaders to look into as they improve their sites:
• Some apps build the social media of an apartment building and allow tenants to sign on for times to use the pool, weight room and other property amenities. Apartment building owners who deploy an app like this then have a resource to ensure tenants maintain social distancing, improve crowd control and streamline onsite activity.
• Several companies look to solve a top landlord and tenant complaint: package delivery. Packages are stolen, never arrive or arrive in poor conditions, and now residents and employees alike desire contactless ways to receive and deliver these packages. Some of these companies use centralized lockers while others, such as Amazon Key, allow employees to actually leave packages inside the apartment units. Other companies take another approach where they accept tenant packages offsite, notify the tenant on the app and then schedule delivery when they’ll be home.
• Many tenants don’t feel safe going to the office, so digital communications with property managers can be difficult. Communication platforms can help property managers send announcements, address complaints and build resident trust and loyalty.
• One of the greatest fears during this pandemic is how to keep people safe while they share the air of their fellow residents. Robots, AI and air filtration systems (not just HEPA filters) are technologies that can help ensure germ-free environments. My favorite is Ella, the little robot that automates cleaning while telling jokes.
• Property managers also can use existing technology to add a vaccination tracking platform to serve as a centralized source of Covid-19 vaccination information and reach a large portion of the population right where they live. My company, as well as other technology companies, provide this technology infrastructure to help give peace of mind to this large portion of the population.
A Responsibility To Support The Community
The pandemic has been a lightning rod for technology entrepreneurs to seize the moment and leverage their software to solve new problems in multifamily real estate. As a result, there are a variety of solutions that can now be deployed to help landlords manage their properties better. Many existing technologies can also pivot to better support critical roles during Covid-19 while still following through on the reasons they were created: to make life better and easier for owners and operators.
What we see in multifamily housing is an exciting example of what happens when the technology community comes together to solve these problems. Of course, technology is only part of the solution. Socially distancing, wearing face coverings and sharing resources is a humanistic effort, not a technical effort.
Tech entrepreneurs have a responsibility to rapidly deploy the technology that already exists to assist communities and customers during these times. However, when considering technologies such as these, it’s very important that owners and operators first perform their due diligence to ensure that the companies with whom they are considering partnering have an established track record of successful and timely deployments, strong ongoing customer support and the feature set that truly satisfies the critical pain points.
Property managers at apartment communities are habitually overburdened, so any tool that can relieve a pain point for them is crucial. Launching a product that either provides a bad end-user experience or fails to fully relieve that pain is a waste of time and money.
That said, the rapid pace of innovation during the past year as companies seek to accommodate a new era of remote management and contactless operations has resulted in a slew of new solutions that can help deliver a healthy ROI and are worth the time for a proper due diligence review.
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