How do successful property managers supercharge their professional relationships? The answer comes down to technology and how they use it. We led a discussion with three Yardi Breeze power users to hear how they use the platform to achieve remarkable success. Watch the entire 16-minute discussion or simply read the highlights below.
First, let’s introduce our panelists:
- Rob Chiang is the founder and CEO of RC Real Estate, based in the Bay Area in California
- Kristina Sekulic is the founder and CEO of Building Broad, based in Chicago
- Greg Condon is the president of Rimrock Property Management, based in Calgary, Alberta
How does Breeze enhance your relationships with tenants, staff & owners?
Kristina Sekulic: I think Breeze is especially useful for me when my property management services are being evaluated by condo associations. Yardi is pretty impressive to them. It looks like we’re running a bigger shop than we actually are. Breeze is super easy to use for me and our staff, but it’s also very easy to use for the condo owners. Oftentimes, we find that other owners are already familiar with Yardi. They’re already in the system, so it’s just super easy and convenient for everybody to use.
Rob Chiang: I can tell you that we just hired three new employees, and having a system like Yardi Breeze makes it plug and play. It’s very helpful to just have one portal for our staff.
Greg Condon:Our owners really like it. They like the ability to log in and have a brief snapshot of their property. We have some owners who even go through their maintenance requests. The ease of access to documents and uploaded reports is a good selling feature when we’re out marketing our services.
What benefits have you seen from working with a single stack solution?
Rob: If you don’t have a single stack solution, you have one app for accounting, one app for maintenance, one app to write leases, one app to do your budgeting — you can imagine how confusing that would be. With Yardi Breeze, everything is in one place in the cloud. It’s a game changer. There’s no way around it. If you want efficiency, accountability and production, at the end of the day, single stack’s the way to go. We’ll never go back to multi-stack. I can’t imagine how we did it before.
How has an integrated corporate website helped drive quality leads & build your brand?
Rob: My previous website was more like an online business card. It had my name, address and contact info, but my branded corporate website actually has a list of all the vacant apartments that we have at the time. It has an interactive map you can click through. If you’re a prospect, you can apply on the website. It’s critical to have a branded corporate website because that’s how people are going see you online. Beyond the map directories and online review pages, your own corporate website is how you handle those warm leads. It also makes owners comfortable and will increase your brand presence in the marketplace.
Would you say that Breeze Premier’s online leasing system has saved your agents time?
Greg: Our leasing is more streamlined because we use the online tenant screening. We’ve probably saved at least a full-time administrator and a half hour per application because we don’t have to hire a property administrator to do the documentation. It’s all done within Breeze now. I think technology is so cool when it effectively removes the need to manually complete repetitive tasks. Breeze Premier can configure time-saving workflows and automate monotonous tasks like processing rent payments, approving vendor invoices and processing maintenance requests.
How have your tenants & staff reacted to these time-saving tools?
Kristina: Bringing in an association and setting it up in Yardi Breeze took less than five minutes. In my mind, I’m just thinking about how many more properties or associations that I can add on. There’s no training involved for this. If you know how to log in to your bank account, you can create an entire profile.
Rob: We’ve gone completely digital as of four years ago, and Breeze was the main proponent of that shift. When you eliminate paper, it’s email blasting instead of posting notices on 50 doors in the rain. The savings go on and on, and it’s going to affect your bottom line in a positive way. You can scale much more rapidly without any worry of having to increase your payroll. Technology investment gets great returns.
How does Breeze assist with your growth plans?
Rob: I’m an investor myself, so it’s just amazing how Breeze makes this process simple. The hardest part is just buying the property and planning the exit strategy. The management part is easy because it’s plug and play. That’s where most investors run away. Buying and selling it is easy: you just hire a broker. But what are you doing in between to make money? You have to execute your strategy. I’ve been hearing about this tool called Yardi Investment Manager. I’m very intrigued because anything that can save time can make the process much more profitable for the user.
How did you know it was time to upgrade?
Kristina: I was looking for something that would make being a property manager a lot easier. Breeze lets you download documents. When you’re working in a condo or homeowner association, you need to have certain documents available to owners such as meeting minutes, governing docs and financial reports. Since I’m not in the business of maintaining association websites, Facebook pages or Google Sheets, Breeze is where I keep all those documents. If anybody needs something, I tell them to log in to their profile. They can pull the docs they need, and this frees up a lot of time for me and my staff. It makes our residents happier too. They don’t have to wait until I get in front of a desk to email them what they want.
We’d like to thank all three of our panelists for participating in this chat on how property managers can supercharge their professional relationships. Check out the video to see the full conversation.
