2020 has brought about quite a number of challenges, but it has also created opportunities. The Sectional Title and HOA industry is growing, but it is critical that managing agents adapt from being a basic secretarial service to professional asset management service with insights into accounting, legal and key business indicators. Your clients no longer expect basic administrative tasks to be performed. They expect a property specialists that can add real value to their assets – this means reducing their risk, clear communication, and reporting on the key performance indicators of their community. How can you as property manager go into 2021 and build a stronger business?
There are 4 core challenges you face and need to overcome in 2021 to build a strong and sustainable business
Compliance
As much as the Sectional Title Management Act of 2016 has brought structure into our industry, it has also placed an additional burden on managing agents to ensure that each community that you manage as well as your business are compliant at all times. You are working harder, but can’t necessarily charge more money for your service. This adds an even bigger workload on your staff and comes with greater responsibility (and risk). It is therefore becoming more and more challenging to run a profitable business, let alone trying to stay on top of the legal requirements. With the roll-out of the POPI act 30 June 2021, Property Managers (and Trustees) have one more legal compliance to align to. You need a solution that equips you to plan, manage and report on all aspects of Compliance. The right property management software solution can create peace-of-mind for you as property manager and the Trustees and Directors you are serving.
Manageability
Your list of essential responsibilities as property manager is long. From day-to-day operational tasks, jobs, issuing of warnings and penalties, arrears management to billing, accounting, financial management and reporting – the pressure is on and the expectations to deliver value high. It is easy to lose control of your team’s responsibilities when trying to manage a decent size portfolio. To combat this, it is common practice with most property managers to introduce more specialised divisions to try and have some form of quality control and to create efficiencies. This is unfortunately not a sustainable solution. It in essence creates silos within a company – mostly due to the lack of transparent and efficient systems. Inevitably this will result in poor performance, service delivery and eventually a poor return on time and investment. We meet Property Managers every day that mostly work in their businesses, rather than on their businesses. They are often tied-up, over-extended and burnt-out. Unless you have a transparent system, that is user-friendly and easily accessible to all, and that allows different users or divisions to work from one platform, it is very difficult to stay on top of all your responsibilities as a property manager. You can either continue to try and cope by working longer hours, employing more staff or reducing your number of communities, or you can use a system that empowers you manage your whole business, and every community, from a single end-to-end platform that is cloud-based, user-friendly and accessible by your team and the clients you serve. Being able to review and report on all your key responsibilities is no longer a luxury – it is a necessity that your clients expect, and that you need to manage your business and staff more efficiently.
Scalability
Scalability is an attribute that describes the ability of an organization to grow and manage increased demand – whether you grow organically or by choice. Some business actively pursue it, while for others it seems unattainable as it is often linked to increased overheads and workload. Where the past 12 months has been a brutal year for many industries, the property industry has been quite resilient. Yes there has been challenges, but It has certainly created opportunities for growth. A scalable property management business has an advantage due to its nature being to more adaptable to the changing needs or demands of its users or clients, as well as the changes in the economical and socio-economical environment. As with most businesses, efficiency and manageability promotes scalability. Property managers that can transform their businesses with the implementation of processes, new generation systems and built-for-purpose technology, will be able to scale and capitalise on the rapidly growing sectional title and HOA market.
Profitability
When you combine the three factors: compliancy, manageability and scalability, turning your established or new business into a more profitable enterprise becomes more easily attainable.
The future of property management is here
Based on a fast-evolving market and the necessary changes that 2020 has brought about, managing agents needs to revise their business model and ensure that they achieve optimum efficiencies by implementing the most advanced systems if they want to capitalise on this fast-growing industry and the opportunities it creates.
Perhaps it is time to upgrade to the most advanced end-to-end property management software in South Africa. WeconnectU enables all managing agents and rental agents, irrespective of their size, to overcome these 4 challenges and transform their business to a scalable and sustainable business.