{"id":23923,"date":"2020-04-01T06:46:40","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T13:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/?p=23923"},"modified":"2020-12-25T02:30:38","modified_gmt":"2020-12-25T10:30:38","slug":"better-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yardi.com\/blog\/better-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Better Together"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the COVID-19 calamity began to wreak havoc on daily apartment operations about a month ago, Jamin Harkness, CAM, CAPS, Executive Vice President, The Management Group, Atlanta, knew it would be something he couldn\u2019t handle on his own.<\/p>\n

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Jamin Harkness<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With everyone involved in property management putting out their own fires \u2013 mostly the same crisis\u2019 he was dealing with \u2013 he decided to reach out to seven of his closest peer confidantes in the Atlanta area and arrange a one-hour roundtable call. The goal was information-sharing — learn what was working and what lied ahead \u2013 for this unprecedented work interruption.<\/p>\n

The Management Group is a new, smaller but growing management company that has six communities under development. Call participants represent small-, medium- and large-sized companies. Everyone had something to contribute. For information how to participate, reach out to Harkness at jharkness@tmg-living.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The group discussed high-urgency topics such as working with a skeleton crew, renewals, amenities and evictions, among other things, and decided to make the call a regular, weekly thing.<\/p>\n

And as the days went by, everywhere they looked, another unique and critical issue arose, so more contributors were needed. Each weighed on their own networks and word of mouth, and by Week 2, there were 32 people on the call.<\/p>\n

Week 3: 65<\/p>\n

Week 4: 108<\/p>\n

The greater the number of participants, the greater the information. Harkness, who has been in property management since 1997, serves as organizer, moderator and secretary for the 11 a.m. ET calls. Realizing his phone system and general IT capabilities were unable to bring together a group this large, he reached out to Yardi and had them create a platform to help the calls run more smoothly through Zoom.<\/p>\n

Realizing that every participant on the call had their own jam-packed work day, he firmly kept the calls to one hour\u2014max, allowing each featured presenter 5 minutes of air time.<\/p>\n

Harkness\u2019s latest call recap covered topics such as:<\/p>\n