When was the last time that you reviewed your unit make ready process? During difficult financial times, it is essential for multifamily managers and owners to cut overhead costs and improve efficiencies in every area of business. You could notably improve portfolio valuation by optimizing how you turn a unit. Yardi caught up with Jennifer Price, director of systems at Walton Communities, to dissect and interpret the latest in multifamily make ready data. Our experience reveals how web-based technologies reduce unit turnover costs and promote efficiency. Economic downturn prompts research into cost-saving measures For property managers and owners, efficiency matters more than ever. The U.S. economy is currently in recession, and multifamily market data for summer 2020 reveals negative rents in the second quarter. This is the first prolong quarter of negative rates since the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Rents drops aren’t expected to rebound until 2021. In multifamily housing, spring is normally a time for growth. Most markets would experience rent growth of about 2% in the second quarter alone. At the end of the first half of 2020, however, rents fell 1.8% year-over-year for luxury lifestyle units. Working-class renter-by-necessity units were only up by 1.4%. Additionally, occupancy rates dropped 30 basis points nationally to 94.4% through May. Analysts forecasts that occupancy rates will continue to decline. A typical multifamily portfolio consisting of 10,000 units will turn 30%-50% of their units each year. Unit turns require a sense of urgency: getting the unit back on the market means restoring cash flow and cutting vacant unit losses. When the turn process is inefficient, however, the portfolio may experience between $2 million to $3 million of NOI losses, or about $40 to $60 million of potentially unrealized asset value, states a recent report...

About a year ago, Carmin Tomassi, vice president, controller at Silverado, walked through the doors of the Irvine, Calif., headquarters for the first time. He was promptly introduced to all 12 systems used by the AP department. From day one, he knew that greater efficiency would take the organization to the next level. He enlisted Yardi to help make that vision a reality. Identifying inefficiencies Silverado’s presence spans the west coast and midwestern United States. Its 59 properties specialize in senior care with an emphasis on assisted living and memory care, as well as hospice and home services. Each location offers a broad range of services for aging seniors. The sites require specialized equipment and steady maintenance. Each day, the accounts payable team received stacks of invoices in various stages of completion and accuracy. Approvals and reconciliation with the general ledger took days longer than Tomassi preferred. To create efficiency, he embarked on a campaign with two major goals. The first was to simplify the department’s software use. “We had maybe a dozen systems that affect accounting. They were all different which was just crazy to me. Even keeping track of your logins was ridiculous,” said Tomassi. “With accounting, things need to talk to each other, and it needs to be seamless. Otherwise, you’re asking for trouble.” The second goal was to expedite approvals by streamlining the filing process. “AP would arrive in the morning and there would be stacks of invoices in their little baskets: no signatures, no allocations, no coding, no nothing, right? They just kind of dealt with it for a while but I said, ‘No. We’ve got to figure out a way to make this more efficient.’ We also needed metrics so we can track the workflow and make changes.”...

“The ROI using Voyager has been huge,” said Jason Hoffman, COO and vice president at Alliance Property Systems, about running its business on the mobile Yardi Voyager platform. Led by a father-son team, Alliance provides comprehensive HOA and condominium management services along with commercial real estate management throughout South Florida. A longtime Yardi client, Alliance has always invested in technology and started with DOS-based Yardi Professional in the early 1990s. To meet new challenges in a changing industry and move its business forward, Alliance switched to the cloud-based Voyager platform in 2015. As a result, Alliance has gained automated workflows for tasks that previously required time-consuming manual processing, and accommodates a business model of “roving property management” with integrated online services and mobile tools. Winning in a tight market Alliance has a portfolio of 70 properties and 6,000 units in South Florida and only 13 employees. To succeed and be profitable in a competitive market with tight margins, the company must streamline and optimize internal processes, according to Leigh Hoffman, Alliance’s president and CEO (and father half of the father-son team). A key way Alliance achieves this is by leveraging Yardi’s leading-edge technology across its business. For a true end-to-end solution, Alliance has added products from the Yardi® Condo Suite to its Voyager platform. Integrated online services and simplified workflows for payments, procurement, invoice processing and more increase productivity and reduce costs for the company. When asked if Alliance’s investment in technology sets the company apart, Jason commented that the Voyager platform “100% helps us win business.” And according to Leigh, “We are more competitive and succeed because we’re offering options to our customers to do more things online, including payments.” Empowering a lean team This biggest line item in Alliance’s budget is employee costs....

Yardi Construction Management is adding features to address project management tasks. A new, customizable dashboard permits users to access subsets of the core data available in Yardi Voyager. Penny Bailey, Project Manager, Construction at Yardi explains several new functionalities that further improve the efficiencies and interface of the software. Document Organization Whether it’s an essential contract or a quick side note, the planned enhancements to Construction Management make it easier for project managers to stay organized and in control. When project managers need to access documents created in Yardi Document Management, they can now click a link on the Construction Management dashboard. “With jobs, there are thousands of documents and drawings and contracts. It’s a pain to get docs in an accessible, central repository. The link to Orion permits multiple users see documents related to that specific job without bouncing between programs,” says Bailey. Construction Management capitalizes on Yardi Document Management’s advanced search capabilities. Users can search document texts in entirety rather than titles or identification numbers alone. Sometimes, it’s the small things that have a major impact. “We’ve added a quick note icon that floats on the right side of the screen,” says Bailey. “Project managers can make notes and then quickly slide the note aside.” With this feature, users can effortlessly add, edit, and delete notes without using a separate application or uploading multiple documents. Budget On the dashboard, users can now see a real-time budget summary for multiple jobs at once. “Quick access to the current budget and actual cost numbers at a glance is invaluable in determining the status of a project,” says Bailey. The integration for Construction Management and Yardi PAYscan is now more seamless than ever. Project managers can issue approvals for contracts, address change orders, revisions and...

A leading property management company requires a software company that is able to accommodate the management of its developments. McCormack Baron turned to Yardi property management solutions to facilitate growth and improve efficiencies across its diverse portfolio.   Yardi Voyager Project Manager Karen Pruiett has been with McCormack Baron for nearly 30 years. She ushered her company through its first Yardi Voyager® implementation in 2004. Since then, she has seen McCormack Baron flourish and adopt new Yardi software to meet its needs. “We chose Yardi Voyager because of its excellent accounting background and the property management capabilities in the software,” says Pruiett. “We looked at different companies and you guys have the best accounting background. Also, the number of property types that you all support is amazing. That was a necessity for us.” Yardi Voyager is a web-based platform that enables clients with larger portfolios to smoothly manage operations. It is ideal for clients like McCormack Baron that manage a spectrum of properties. With Voyager, McCormack Baron executes leases, runs analytics, and issues innovative resident, tenant, and investor services. The software automates workflows and permits controlled transparency that enables the firm to collaborate with greater accuracy and efficiency. “Voyager has definitely improved our efficiencies,” Pruiett says. Yardi PAYscan Pruiett recalls notable savings with Yardi PAYscan™, a Voyager ancillary product that automates invoice processing. “PAYscan has totally saved our lives. We were doing a lot of manual invoice processing. Now that we can scan our invoices into PAYscan, it’s absolutely wonderful to have the image attached to the invoice, especially for auditing purposes.” Before PAYscan, the accounting team had to dig through file cabinets to find invoices during audits. Now, auditors receive limited access to PAYscan and they are able to pull images of invoices...