New Technologies in Real Estate are Advancing Quickly
The real estate industry including property management has undergone a lot of technological change in the last few years. Remember when your Realtor would constantly stop by to get a “quick signature” from you before eSignature technologies became widely accepted? We can now close on a house from our home office PC all by digital signature. Drone photography and 3d tours of homes is gaining popularity as well for real estate listings, but are still considered premium as of this writing.
In property management (rentals and HOA), purpose built management softwares such as AppFolio, Buildium, and Yardi, are costly and come with a learning curve, but are essential to effectively compete in the industry and manage homes when you have 50 or more. The technologies allow tenants to pay rent online and submit maintenance requests including a photo or video of the issue all from their smart phone. This saves time and money for all parties (tenant, manager, and owner) and improves accuracy and efficiency as maintenance personnel receive more detailed information faster. It’s standard now that rents are paid online and late fees are automatic to ensure they’re not missed.
Showing Homes - The Old Way
What’s been common in Real estate for decades is allowing people we don’t know to tour our house, with or without possessions inside. Think about it – you hire a Realtor to sell your home and multiple times per week they’re asking you to leave so a Buyer’s agent (another Realtor that your Realtor has never met) and their interested party, which may not be qualified to own the home) can walk through the home for an hour. Usually it’s in the evening just after work and your family time right? There is a a level of trust extended here to the process but it works and issues are rare.
Where the process breaks down is when the home is shown dozens of times, which is ~40 hours of your (owner’s) time cleaning and leaving the home with your dogs, or for the Realtor that must show dozens of homes to his picky buyers.
When showing rental homes to prospective tenants, there is a similar process where the manager sets up a time with the current tenants of the home for a showing, if occupied, and the current tenants of the home leave for the hour with their pets. Occupied or not, the manager then drives to the home and let’s people walk through while answering mostly basic questions that are already in the online listing like “how much is the rent”?
Where the process breaks down is that 50-60% of the time the interested party doesn’t show up to the showing (!!!) and stops communicating, so the manager’s and current occupants time is wasted. You’re probably thinking “I’d never do that”, and I’m sure you wouldn’t, but the realty is half or more of the time people in our over busy, over committed, and over stressed culture let it happen. Likely a scheduling issue occurred such as one of the tenant’s two jobs needed them to stay late, or kids sports scheduling, or they were approved for a different rental the day before. This happens if the home is occupied or vacant; no shows to showings are a hugely time consuming process that drives up the owner’s cost to sell or rent out the home.
Solutions to Reducing Showing "No Shows"
Contrary to how you live your life, most people probably aren’t as organized or reliable as you are. They don’t have a personal calendar with events like a showing on it to remind them, and they probably don’t setup reminders on their phone. As professional property managers, we’ve found that texting (not emailing or calling) people 3-4 hours before the showing improves the situation as some people will confirm or let you know they can no longer make it. It still isn’t foolproof, but it helps.
Another solution we employ at Freedom Rental Property Management is doing open house showings, and this is our standard for occupied homes. We setup two times per week when showings will occur for one hour – a weekday evening after work 6pm, and a weekend time. No shows still occur, but at least when there are two parties RSVP’d for the open house, generally one of them will still show up. Where this can still break down is of course sometimes none of the RSVP’s show up, and the manager, who may have 15 turnovers occurring at once during the summer, doesn’t have enough time or desire to perform management all day during business hours, and then show 2-3 houses daily on nights and weekends.
Technology Facilitates Self Showings - The New Way
Technologies such a Tenant Turner, ShowDigs, ShowMojo, Rently, and LetHub all facilitate self showings of vacant homes to tenants. The software allows the property manager to set a schedule of when the home is available for showings and facilitates all the communication with the interested party on setting up a tour and it sends them reminders, confirmation prompts, and feedback requests. Qualified tenants are sent a code that allows them to access the lockbox or keypad deadbolt on the home with access and lockup instructions.
Benefits for Property Managers
- Ability to setup custom pre-qualification questions that the tenant must answer. If their answer, such as having sufficient income or an acceptable move in date doesn’t match what the manager is looking for, the process stops and the tenant isn’t given access to the home.
- Completely solves the “no show” issues and saves a huge amount of time.
- Manager never misses a lead.
Benefits for Tenants
- The tenant gets instant responses to their inquiry via text and email, and no longer has to wait for a busy property manager to respond with templated information.
- Tenants tour the home at a time that works for them.
- Tenants do not feel pressured or rushed during the showing while the manager waits. This experience is preferable especially to the younger generation.
Benefits for Owners
- The home gets rented out faster, which minimizes the vacancy time, saving them money. Vacancy is one of, if not the most costly aspects of owning a rental home.
- The manager can be more efficient, which may reduce management costs to the owner.
Our Process
Occupied Homes
When homes are available for rent and still occupied, we facilitate open house showings to qualified parties, assuming the existing tenant occupant is cooperating and the home is in presentable condition. It’s common in the industry for management companies to not show occupied homes at all, and opinions vary on this, but we feel it’s more beneficial to the owner for us to start showings sooner than later as it may minimize vacancy. This is better for the owner’s finances and ROI on their investment. We do not allow self tours of occupied homes containing possessions.
Vacant Homes
We employ a mix of open house in person showings and self showings via the Tenant Turner software depending on timing and availability. Interested parties must pass the pre-qualification / screening questions, and can tour at a time that works for them. We’ve seen showings done at all times of the day from 7am on a Sunday morning to 10pm on a Thursday night, and occasionally capture video of the unexpected mouse roaming the house at 4am.
What About Squatters?
You’ve probably heard about squatting issues in the news and are right to ask this question with concern. Squatting isn’t a widespread issue in Minnesota, but does happen from time to time on vacant homes for rent or not. An online search will produce examples, and being a hot topic last year the instances made the news often. The issues come in when owners and managers don’t have any visibility on the property for multiple weeks or months. Squatting vs trespassing laws are tightening up across the country as of this writing. In short, they are trespassing and can’t prove residency in the short amount of time they’ll have access to the home and the police will escort them out. Worst case a legal eviction may be filed to get them out.
At Freedom Rental Property Management, we’re serious about providing high value solutions that work for owners and tenants, and this includes protecting the owner’s asset with regular checks and monitoring.
We Are Watching and Listening To The Property
- We require interested parties to upload a copy of their drivers license to the software when scheduling their visit. They must confirm their visit within 3 hours of the scheduled time and only then will they obtain an access code.
- We install a Wifi Camera inside each vacant home and position it for coverage of entrances and faces. The video is motion activated and saved instantly to the cloud. The property manager is notified instantly on their phone with a live video feed when the camera is recording (both video and audio). If the camera goes offline unexpectedly, we pay a visit to the property same day.
We still visit the property regularly to ensure things are still presentable and as expected with lights off, doors and windows locked, heat or AC is working, no water issues, etc.
Feedback on Using Self Showing Technology
Freedom Rental Property Management’s owner has dozens of rental properties on the west side of the twin cities area and has used self showing software since 2024 successfully and without issue. Vacancies are reduced and positive feedback from viewing parties is received often as it fits their schedule and they don’t feel pressured during the showing. Owners benefit from cost savings on lower vacancy and Freedom Rental Property Management’s below industry standard turnover fees.
