Property Management Post-COVID

By Alyssa Laffitte on August 2, 2020

As the COVID-19 health situation develops, we must continue to keep ourselves safe. Part of your responsibility as a property manager is to make your property a safe place for your tenants to live. In the midst of a pandemic, there are certain actions you can take that will make your property safer. Here are several tips for property management post-COVID.

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Consider virtual tours for prospective new tenants

As the fall semester approaches, many students will start to look for housing. To protect your employees and prospective new tenants, it’s best they don’t host in-person showings of apartments. In place of in-person showings, you could consider hosting virtual tours. You could film a walkthrough of each type of apartment your property offers and post it online. If you want to be more involved, you could also create a 3D rendering of each type of apartment and post it (bonus points if it’s interactive!). Additionally, if you would rather host showings in real-time (so that prospective tenants can ask you questions in real time), you could do showings via video chat. There are many ways to host virtual tours of your apartments. Hosting virtual showings is a safe way to allow prospective tenants to see the apartments you offer.

Decide how you will reopen your property’s amenities

In addition to prospective tenants, you also need to consider the safety of your current tenants. Part of keeping your tenants safe is to decide how you will reopen your property’s amenities. First, you need to decide if it’s safe enough to reopen the amenities. You can use health data from your city’s official website to make this decision. Once you’ve decided it’s safe to reopen, you can do so with certain limitations. For example, it would be a good idea to enforce social distancing, mask-wearing, frequent hand washing, and keeping places at a low capacity. You should also disinfect these common areas frequently. Being careful when reopening your property’s amenities is a good way to keep your tenants and employees safe.

Have current tenants renew their leases virtually

The start of the fall semester will likely involve many current tenants renewing their leases. These leases are usually renewed during in-person meetings. However, considering the current health situation, it would make more sense to have tenants renew their leases virtually. You can have a virtual meeting with each of your tenants and email them their new lease agreement. Then, have them sign the agreement and return it to you in a safe way. For example, they can drop it off in a mailbox, or they can scan it and email it back to you. An effective way to keep your tenants safe is to have them renew their leases virtually.

Mange your property’s operations virtually

As a property manager, you will need to deal with many aspects of your property. For example, you will need to resolve your tenants’ maintenance requests, deal with tenants moving in/out, handle packages, and coordinate the cleaning for common areas (like the amenities). Even though managing these responsibilities usually happens in person, you will need to do it virtually for everyone’s safety. To keep operations running smoothly, you will need to use email and cloud-based services, since it will allow all your employees to be on the same page. It will also allow you to communicate with your tenants. Additionally, these will help you keep things organized. Organization will make it much easier to manage your property throughout this pandemic! Managing operations virtually is the safest way to move forward.

Abide by the laws of your local area…

Because the health situation is very different across geographical regions, the laws could vary from state to state, or even from city to city. For this reason, you need to be aware of the laws in your specific area. You can visit your city’s official website to read about the current laws regarding masks, social distancing, and which places can reopen. Knowing the laws of your area can help you determine which amenities you can open and how you can interact with your tenants. As you reopen your amenities and continue managing your property, be sure to know the current laws in your area, and follow them!

…and by the health recommendations

In addition to following the laws of your area, you should also know about and follow the national health recommendations. Similar to the local laws, the national health recommendations will outline actions you can take to help you, your employees, and your tenants stay safe. Some of those actions will include requiring people to keep distance from each other, frequent disinfection of common areas, and mask-wearing. Following these measures will make your property a safer environment.

Clearly, it’s important that you, as a property manager, take measures to make your property a safe place to live.

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