Text: Phoebe Walton
Source: This article is from the October 2011 issue of Real Estate Investor.
Taking care of administration while growing your portfolio
A small business of any kind tests entrepreneurship abilities to the max. With the diversity of skills required from marketing to finance it is no wonder 90 per cent fail in the first 5 years and most in the following 5 years too. “Often when we offer to treble businesses with their same staff, the property managers have heart failure from panic rather than celebration”, says Hudson van Niekerk from The Rental Hub. “They envision their current headaches and multiply by three and understandably just don’t want that! Imagine a business that does not want to grow? But the fear is real, very real”.
Which other business fears trebling its turnover due to an administration nightmare?
Van Niekerk says that the financial software out there is good but lacking on the facilities side and this is where they come in. “For example a common problem is: where do we load ‘promises to pay’ and at a future date pull a report giving us the list of promises to pay for that day.”
They designed their own facilities software to integrate with an existing giant on the financial side. “We did not want to re-invent the wheel, but ironically our software got so good and although the agents loved it, they were really intimidated about driving the data”, says van Niekerk. “It is great to be able to capture a conversation on a program to be recalled for a later use but most agents do not really want to be capturing the data”, he comments.
Software offers a unique central processing bureau for the rental industry
Rental software offers a unique central processing bureau for the rental industry. The sophisticated software and call centre are there to help run agents’ entire administration. “The rental agents want and need 100 per cent of what our systems do, but only need to know how 5 per cent of it works”, says van Niekerk. “Most rental agents never get beyond 100 units and are comfortable wherever the number settles.
To suggest trebling their books is more likely to elicit heart failure from fear rather than excitement. That absolutely emphasises the dilemma and diversity of the role. Which other business fears trebling its turnover?”
Owner and tenant processing
- Raise rent & other monthly charges
- Allocate levy and council entries to tenants • Receipt payments from tenants
- Tenant Arrears follow up
- Credit bureau updates and enquiries
- Facilitate payments of all creditors from available funds
Tenant activity management
- Tenant Call centre
- Process notice letters
- Notification of inspections due
- Maintenance requests screened
- Vacancy Forecasting
Value added products
- Facilitation of Evictions
- Rental Insurance (covers loss of rental and eviction costs)
- Tenant Vetting
- Building Insurance
Eliminated costs as a result of using The Rental Hub
- No Software costs
- No additional staff required to grow your Rental Business
- Bank Charges recouped
Benefits of an efficiently operated rental business
- Annuity Revenue
- Increased presence in the area
- Tenants become buyers
- Landlords are source of future mandates
- Sadly the converse is true too and a negatively run rental book has many negative consequences.
Rental software allows a rental business to unequivocally focus on growth and revenue, knowing full well it has a variable costing on each lease that professionally manages all the operations and relationships.
