Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

We all know that Property Management isn’t for the faint of heart, it requires commitment, grit, perseverance and most of all creative solutions to old-age problems. Over the past few years, the pendulum has shifted towards higher rentership, ensuring more freedom and mobility to the new generation (the saying among Millennial now goes “Don’t act like you rent the place”), while providing rewarding opportunities for property investors, owners and managers. However, the question remains: How can we capture this emerging opportunity in the housing market, while moving past the traditional method of doing business in order for us to stay sustainable long-term?

Access and Convenience are keys to success and property managers know that in order to engage the younger prospect tenants, new technology needs to be adopted. This could be the integration of web-based tools, mobile apps, software, artificial intelligence, etc. with the hope of not just adopting technology for the purpose of being “cool” but specifically to improve efficiency and save cost. It is understandable that property managers have a certain method of dealing with their madness and have been successful with their bag of tricks, but if companies fail to minimize the technology gap it will become increasing hard to beat out the competition- which looks like it is popping up everywhere. The trick thus becomes leveraging new technology which helps automate and streamline business while keeping true to your core values.

Over the past three years, ShowingHero has invested its time and resources in understanding the housing market and rental trends and provided property managers across North America the platform to become efficient- customize scheduling, 24/7 access to their business by allowing prospect tenants to schedule after business hours, increase their weekly showings to over 150 showings to improve overall reach, and provide reports to help them understand their customers better. Property Management requires a team of superheroes all managing different tasks through a well-defined process, and technology only helps alleviate some of those leasing woes.

We might have hesitation in embracing disruptive and innovative technology and ask if it’s really worth the hassle or cost, but if we truly understand that being disruptive is part of growth and a natural evolution to help meet customer demands, we won’t be afraid of adopting new technology but see it is a natural progression in transforming complicated problems to simple solutions.