Property-management companies with multifamily assets know that attracting residents to fill apartments is not as challenging as keeping residents.
Here’s the thing: most apartment communities are already seeing impressive leasing numbers. With tariffs impacting the housing market. As home ownership is out of reach for many, analysts predict apartment complexes will stay full.
So, multifamily-property managers should have no trouble keeping vacancy rates low in the foreseeable future.
However, that still means that competition between multifamily properties will remain. As such, retention will be the key to continued success going forward.
That especially matters for luxury apartments, which, as RealPage reports, are at risk of losing residents to more-affordable alternatives.
Younger renters new to the job market are looking for ways to save money. Moving back in with family can be tempting if their apartment doesn’t feel worth it.
Maintenance is an Essential Amenity
For many residents, caring for their living space is the key to retention. Specifically, by offering quick and dependable maintenance solutions to residents.
When maintenance is treated as an amenity high on residents’ priorities, it becomes more critical. It goes beyond being one of those “essentials” taken for granted. It becomes a perk that the property can highlight in marketing and enjoy in word-of-mouth communications like customer reviews.
Most residents are unlikely to break a lease if the dog park does not have wi-fi. Even so, residents will choose to leave if they go a week in the summer without AC. This can happen when the maintenance team does not finish the repair in time.
Unresolved maintenance issues can push a resident to leave and tell others exactly why they did.
Improving Maintenance Operations with Proptech
Maintenance will be a key element in resident retention because it is not a nice-to-have amenity, but a must-have. If a dishwasher breaks or a dryer malfunctions, leaving clothes wet after a drying cycle, suddenly the amenity of maintenance connects directly to quality of life for the resident.
Obviously, a good maintenance team wants to make sure that maintenance issues are resolved in a timely manner. And resident retention aside, property managers understand that good maintenance is essential to mitigating and preventing undue property damage.
Many multifamily-property managers see the value in integrating proptech to keep maintenance staff on top of work orders.
An example is HelloSpoke’s Notify, which can help property-management companies ensure that maintenance issues are resolved in time. Excellent service in maintenance goes beyond just fixing the problem–staff needs to fix it before the resident feels a sharp decrease in quality of life.
How Notify Works
What Notify does is push notifications based on missed calls to staff members on a list. With maintenance emergency calls, staff members can choose text or call notifications from Notify.
Notify starts with the first name on the list. If that person does not confirm receipt of the notification, then Notify goes to the next name.
This process can go on for 24 hours, cycling through the list, only stopping in that timeframe when someone confirms receipt.
These notifications will include the transcript of the missed call’s message, offering staff to see at a glimpse the nature of the problem. Staff can directly create a work order from Notify that goes into a property-management platform, such as Yardi, RealPage, ResMan or Entrata.
Proptech for Handling Maintenance Emergencies
Notify will interpret the missed call’s message to predict whether it is about an emergency. If so, it pushes the notification to the list.
If Notify interprets the missed call’s message as not being an emergency, it will notify the caller that the issue has been deemed not an emergency. Of course, the issue will still be resolved by maintenance, just not with the priority granted to actual emergencies.
Residents who call again within an hour will automatically have their message escalated to staff, helping hedge against the possibility of letting a true emergency go unaddressed.
The overall result is that your maintenance operations can become much more efficient, allowing maintenance staff to quickly prioritize work orders.
The Benefits of Notify
Improving maintenance operations with Notify helps you compete in offering the top-of-the-list amenity that is excellent maintenance service.
Just like fast Wi-Fi or a secure package room, great maintenance service directly improves the day-to-day experience of residents. It builds trust, satisfaction, and most importantly—retention.
Notify can help residents feel that they are living in a community that feels responsive, clean, and cared for.
When something breaks, they want to know it’ll be fixed fast by someone who treats their home with respect.
That peace of mind? That’s an amenity.
Interested in implementing Notify at your multifamily property? Let’s talk!