A sincere thank you to all of our friends along with wishes for a peaceful, happy, and healthy holiday season!  Scott, Lisa, Monica, Nathan & Korah

We learned that many of our property management friends are extremely artistic, outside of just creating beautiful snowflakes for a great cause! Leota, one of our $50 VISA winners, created a stilleto high heel out of a dollar bill; see the picture in our album for proof! We had necklaces made out of a TenantTech business card, an origami heart ornament, just to name a few of the unique creations.

We heard from several attendees our snowflakes gave inspiration in their personal and professional lives. Some were excited to initiate snowflake making contests at their communities, and others were excited about making their own creations with their kids and grandchildren in celebration of Winter and the holidays.

Congratulations to Leota, Mary and Angela for winning our special giveaways! And, thanks again to all who participated and made Trends happen! See you next year…

Elvis joined TenantTech at MMHA’s Spectrum Trade Show last week to enjoy the “Hollywood” theme. While Elvis was singing “Heartbreak Hotel” we heard from several attendees they were enjoying “stable” properties citing low rental vacancy rate/high occupancy percentages.

I had the good fortune of teaching two classes this year, Leasing 101 and Advanced Leasing. In both classes, I produced a brief snapshot of our current market; in Oregon, unemployment is currently (July 2011) at 9.5% and weighed in at 4.1% in the first quarter of 2011 with the lowest rental vacancy rates in the USA. Overwhelmingly, class attendees agreed that despite pessimistic unemployment rates and foreclosures, people are still renting apartments/homes!

Thanks for visiting us at Spectrum! If you missed, or even if you attended and are interested in hearing a more detailed synopsis of the property management market, I’d encourage you to attend MMHA’s Apartment Report Survey Breakfast next month, on October 19th, 7:30am, at the Multnomah Athletic Club. Check out the distinguished panel of speakers; it’s sure to be informative!

Have a great day!

My dog is a huge part of our family. He goes to my kids’ baseball games, he jogs with me every day, he lays next to me when I’m working and when I’m sick. We aren’t the only family who lives by the “Man’s best friend” adage!

Here’s a couple of tips to get the most out of your pet policy for your prospects and current residents:

1. Always be empathetic in delivering your pet policy. “Unfortunately, we do not accept dogs over 25 pounds.” The key word is “unfortunately”! Again, most people’s pets are part of their family and ultimately if you don’t accept their pet for whatever reason, say Brutus is a pitbull or 10 pounds over your doggy-weight limit, the end result is usually an apartment deal-breaker.

2. Write down the pet’s name on your Guest Card. Upon tour or visit, be sure to ask about Brutus, and if you haven’t already, what kind of a dog he is, his habits, stories about his doggy-birth, etc. Believe me, instant rapport builder.

3. Share 411 on the pet accommodations at your property. Are there walking trails, fields, a dog park and dog-stations for convenient clean-ups near by?

4. Have a contest that incorporates your residents’ pets. Ask them to submit a picture along with a story that is voted on by your community.

5. Start a weekly, monthly, or annual Dog-Fest or Walk. Another avenue for residents to meet not only neighbors’ pets, but neighbors!

6. Some Managers are brave enough to incorporate dog-sitting into their concierge style of management. Now that takes “wearing different hats in property management” to a whole new level.

7. If a share of your target market is directed specifically toward pets, ensure your advertising displays this information. Use pictures of pets and advertising channels, like www.peoplewithpets.com/.

8. Review your pet policy to ensure you are competitive with the market; this includes your acceptance of pets, deposits and pet rent.

On the front end, you’ll receive a professionally designed, attractive, and highly functional website. On the back end, your site will be hosted on reliable cloud servers and easily customized with your own photos, floor plans, text, images, etc. You can customize it yourself by uploading your own images, or let us do it for you. You can even add or remove tabs and other navigation elements.

We’re offering three basic categories of property websites: Template, Partially Custom, and Fully Custom.

Template Sites

This is the least expensive option because you select from existing templates that are available to other management companies and property owners. Each template comes in several color options to match your style. We are currently building out our gallery of templates.

Partially Custom Sites

If you like one of our existing templates but want it more highly customized than just putting in your photos, text, and other content, we can create a partially customized version just for you. Examples of partial customizations would include custom background images, moderate alterations to the layout, and custom html forms.

Fully Custom Sites

Many times it’s important to stand out completely with your own fully customized website, built for you from the ground up. Not only will you get a professional design that nobody else has, you’ll still have the benefit of our back-end framework that lets you control the content, post blog entries, switch out images, etc.

Corporate Sites Too

Of course your management company needs its own site, so if you don’t have one or you’re looking for a facelift or a total overhaul, let us know.

To Learn More

To see how TenantTech can build your community or corporate site, see samples, and get a price quote, call our sales team at 800-230-2125 or email sales@tenanttech.com today.

How does it work?

It’s so simple that the demos we’ve been doing have only lasted a few minutes. We provide you with a single file that needs to be installed on your Yardi server, and it doesn’t matter whether you are self-hosted or hosted by Yardi. Once the file is in place, you create 2 new Yardi buttons, and we show you how. Then on the Yardi Residents screen you can put in all of your regular information such as rent, lease dates, lease charges, roommates, vehicle info, deposits, etc.

Once all that is saved, just click the TenantTech Documents button and the data is instantly transmitted to our server over a secured connection. It’s that quick. Switch to MultiFamilyForms, refresh the screen, and see the new resident and lease information.

No more double-entry.

Look over the rental agreement, print it out, and you’re done.

We’ve even built a fully customizable field-mapping system that allows us to map fields from Yardi’s lease information and associate them with fields in MultiFamilyForms. This allows us to make sure data goes where it’s supposed to.

Is it safe and secure?

Absolutely. Everything we do is created with your data security first and foremost in mind. Every data transmission from Yardi goes over an encrypted SSL connection, and is fully authenticated. The data is immediately stored in our secure system just like the rest of your resident and property information.

What if you don’t use Yardi?

We understand that not everyone uses Yardi for their property management accounting. We are currently exploring integrations with other major software vendors.

Getting started

If you are a current or prospective user of MultiFamilyForms / TenantTech, give our sales team a call or email at 877-230-2125 or sales@tenanttech.com and we’ll get this set up for you.