Seven Property Management Automations to Increase ROI

Time is money, no matter how you swing it. Whether you’re spending your own time on property management tasks or you’re paying someone on your team to take care of it for you, every minute has a price tag attached to it. Property management automation is invaluable when it comes to scaling your property management business and driving a higher profit margin.

Automation carries a number of additional benefits for your business, too. It reduces human error, ensuring consistency and accuracy in various business processes. It can even enhance customer experiences through personalized communication and efficient service.

Most importantly, automation lowers operational costs, making it a cost-effective solution for startups and small businesses, as well as more established property management teams.

What is Property Management Automation?

That all sounds great, but exactly is automation?

Automation in property management is the process of using technology and software to perform tasks and processes without direct human intervention. It aims to streamline operations, increase efficiency, reduce errors, and ultimately enhance productivity.

Make a list of the tasks your team handles on a daily basis, often doing the same things over and over again. Automation aims to free up that manpower, giving you additional leverage to scale your property management business. The best part of it all? Automation doesn’t take any effort on your end after the initial setup.

Think of it like doing your laundry; your job is to throw dirty clothes in the washer. That’s it. The machine takes care of the rest of it for you. Pre-soaks, rinse cycles, washing, fabric softening…it’s not even on your radar. You know the machine will take care of every step of the process and you’ll end up with clean clothes.

What Tools Do I Need for Property Management Automation?

There isn’t a property manager on the planet who doesn’t want to waste less time and cut staffing costs. So, where’s the catch, right?

Well, you will need to invest in certain property management automation tools in order to systemize your operations. All of the property management automations we cover in this article can be handled using the following tools:

• A Property Management CRM: CRM, or customer relationship management, software is designed to help you monitor interactions with both prospective clients and existing customers alike.  The best property management CRM should include automated followups, meaning you won’t have to write a single email to engage with the client.
• An Optimized Property Management Website: Your property management website is your digital footprint, advertising your business to the masses and helping you capture leads; of course, your website should also include a number of functions that allow both your clients and tenants to interact with your team.
• Hiring Platform: Long gone are the days when property managers stuck an ad in the newspaper and hoped for bites. If you want to enjoy the full benefits of hiring automation, you’ll need to use a property management hiring tool like DoorGrow Hiring.

How Much is Property Management Automation Going to Cost Me?

Maybe you’re saying to yourself, okay, this all sounds great…but how much am I going to be forced to spend if I want to automate my property management processes?

While it’s true you will need to make a financial investment to reap the full benefits of automation, the cost of all of the tech tools necessary is much less than hiring a full-time employee. And automation could theoretically save you much more than you’d expect, collapsing time for several of your team members.

Property Management CRM
Expect to pay $100-200 per month for your property management CRM. This pricing may vary if you’re using a tool like LeadSimple, which charges you for each communication with your client.

Property Management Website
Development costs for a property management website vary greatly across the board; in general, you can expect to pay $5-10k for the site development, and around $200/month for hosting, support, and other related upkeep.

Property Management Hiring Software
Property management hiring automation is still in its infancy; expect to pay per applicant or per seat for your team members, to the tune of a few hundred dollars per month.

The Best Property Management Processes to Automate

Ready to get started automating in your business? Start with these seven property management automations:

Lead Nurturing

Looking to get the best possible conversion rates for your property management leads? Use your CRM to automate the followup process after leads fill out the form on your website for more information. You can experiment with different lead magnets to see what helps you to get the best results. We cover this extensively in our free DoorGrow Code course.

Review Requests

Does it still feel like a struggle to get reviews for your property management business?

Using your website in combination with a review tool like GatherKudos is one of the most effective property management automations out there. Not only does it lessen the load on your team’s shoulders, but it will help you to boost your reputation while you’re at it.

Hiring Team Members

Tired of the recruitment nightmare every time you go to add new team members? Use a tool like DoorGrow hiring, with candidate assessments and full applicant tracking to take the hard work out of hiring.

Rent Collection

Your website should be fully integrated with your property management software, making collecting monthly rent checks completely seamless. Say goodbye to monthly bills and let the tech do the hard work for you.

Maintenance Coordination

When things go wrong inside of the properties you manage, you don’t want your team scrambling to take maintenance requests and trying to coordinate with vendors. Your website should be doing the heavy lifting for you, taking requests from tenants and assigning them the right person to get the job done.

Referral Partnerships

Building referral relationships takes plenty of hard work and elbow grease, right? Wrong. When you use tools like the Neighbor Strategy, you can reap the benefits of an automated referral process; all DoorGrow websites also include a built-in referral program tool that makes it easy for referral partners to calculate potential commissions from partnering with your team. This can go a step further in helping you automate the entire process.

Day-to-Day Management Tasks

From advertising vacancies and scheduling showings to handling move-outs and taking care of property inspections, it’s easy to automate many of the most common processes you handle as a property manager; using a workflow tool like DoorGrow Flow makes it easy.

Need operations help to automate your property management processes? Learn how the Mastermind is designed with your needs in mind.