Partner Post: 8 Security Tips for Property Managers to Save Time and Money

This content was republished with permission from Flock Safety. 

You’ve heard the saying “time is money.” If you’re a property manager, you can probably identify. Together with managing your portfolio of properties, you’re also managing your time in order to best serve these properties. When crises occur in your community that affect your residents and tenants, they quickly become your problem to handle.

We’ve put together 8 tips property or community managers can follow to ensure maximum savings on time and money.

1. Act Fast

The last problem you need as a property manager is a property crime that you haven’t yet dealt with. When property crimes happen, solving and getting the crime off your desk should take priority over any other issue. If you’re procrastinating when a resident does report a crime, it’s most likely because the thought of combing through hours of security camera footage doesn’t sound appealing.

Police say the first 48-72 hours are the most crucial in gathering evidence. After this time period, case leads often grow cold. The faster you can get evidence to police to solve the crime, the better the chances are of police bringing justice to your community, and the lower the chances are of the crime happening again.

With the right neighborhood safety camera, you can quickly get the right evidence you need to hand off to police. You won’t feel the need to procrastinate because you no longer have to spend hours searching for footage.

2. Keep Communication Open
Residents look to you as a source of information and authority. When incidents happen, it’s your job to keep residents informed and updated.

Residents will fully appreciate the attention you give them through updates on when an incident occurred, what has been done about it, what your next steps will be. You can even provide a few proactive steps residents can take to prevent future incidents.

This will save you time by proactively answering questions residents will no doubt have when a crime happens. Thanks to social media, news can spread faster than you think. Be as open as you can with your tenants and save yourself the hassle of backtracking to answer questions over the phone, through social media, or through emails.

3. Properly Screen Tenants

Don’t think you can save money by skimping on the tenant screening process. By not properly vetting your tenants, you run the risk of picking up after residents who treat your clients' properties poorly.

To save you time while properly vetting tenants, you can implement an automation system for screening and finding quality tenants. The system should ideally help you with processes like background checks, security deposits, and any related paperwork.

Landlords can still help in the final in-person vetting of a tenant.

By spending a little more time vetting tenants before allowing them to move in, you can save time and money in the long-run on damage control.

4. Be Proactive

When you’re proactive, you can rest easy knowing you’ve done all you can to stay ahead of trouble. When issues happen, you’ll have steps in place to make your problem-solving process easier and quicker.

This will prove especially helpful when used in your communication practices.

As we mentioned above, when you’re proactive with sharing communication with your residents, you’ll be more appreciated.

5. Stay Available

Residents and clients appreciate when they know you’ll respond to their questions and needs in a timely manner. They want to know you’re there for them.

If you aren’t able to respond immediately, let them know and keep them updated on your solution to their problem. When you show your clients you truly care about resolving their issue, you’ll receive the appreciation you deserve.

6. Be Organized

Document, document, document.

As a property manager, you’re already documenting all your interactions with clients and residents, so this will probably come easy to you.

To help with organization, start documenting how you spend your time. This will give you a better idea of what areas you need help with on improving time usage.

This is how one property manager we spoke to found out she was spending 3-5 hours on just one crime incident. And she was dealing with several a week. She knew she needed to find a solution quickly in order to help with her time savings.

The more organized you are, the easier it will be for you to identify areas of growth. You can then quickly make changes and improvements to your routine or daily workload. 

7. Don't Forget about Inspections

If your clients are landlords, you’ll want to help them make sure they regularly inspect their properties. As a property manager, you might have to perform these inspections for your landlords.

Understand that landlords just want to protect their investment, and regular inspections help them do so.

Generally, properties should be inspected anywhere from 1-3 times a year.

8. Stay Up to Speed on Best Practices

Be curious about what better ways exist for you to accomplish your goals as a property or community manager.

Do this by staying updated on changes in rules and regulations, local rent rates, or any other emerging trends related to real estate. Property owners and residents want to know that the manager they’re working with is up to date on their information and practices.