5 Key Skills for Affordable Housing Managers

Are you aiming to succeed as a property manager in affordable housing? Or are you a property owner looking for the right property manager that can help you maximize your ROI from your rental property? Either way, you should know the top property management skills necessary to excel in the industry.

Read on to learn more about these must-have skills and what tools can help you nurture them and ensure your success in property management. 

Excellent Communication Skills

As a property manager, you’re expected to have solid communication skills, both written and verbal. You should be able to communicate smoothly with different kinds of people, including tenants, property owners, staff, contractors, suppliers, and several other professionals or businesses.

You must not only relay messages clearly but also actively listen to these people. For example, tenants are likely to have questions or concerns about policies, repairs, and other relevant matters. Make them feel heard and valued while giving them solutions and setting clear timeframes. Communicate any changes or updates as well to avoid potential conflicts or disputes.

To be a good communicator, practice active listening with your tenants, reply politely to queries as soon as possible, and adjust your communication style based on the person you’re talking to. For example, you can have a friendly but still authoritative tone when talking to your tenants.

Using effective property management software like ExactEstate can also help you ensure smooth communication with your tenants. For instance, our resident portal makes it easier for your residents to create work orders and monitor their progress. You can also send them email notifications at the click of a button. Since the portal is also mobile-friendly, residents can access it anywhere they go, hence keeping the lines of communication open.

Attention to Detail

Learning how to drive yourself to success in property management also means having great attention to detail. One of your main goals as a property manager is to make sure that every aspect is handled well. This includes addressing tenant concerns, coordinating with contractors, keeping the property well-maintained, managing finances, and more.

Having strong attention to detail allows you to protect and grow the property owner’s investment, reduce conflicts, and attract more tenants. Focusing on the details includes organizing important property-related documents. With ExactEstate’s document management system, you can conveniently access your online files wherever you are. These include lease agreements, applications, marketing files, and compliance documents.

You can securely store important documents without worrying about any unauthorized access. Moreover, you don’t have to spend weeks just to make sure you get all the details right. ExactEstate offers you detailed property management reporting. This includes late fee reports, vendor ledger reports, delinquent and prepaid account reports, bank deposit summaries, and income summaries.

You can also set personal reminders to make sure that you’re not missing important deadlines and that you have all the relevant information you need. When it comes to choosing the right tenants, ExactEstate also allows you to thoroughly screen tenants with credit reports and hassle-free background checks. As a result, you can easily determine qualified leads and turn them into affordable housing residents with just a few button clicks.

Patience

Being a property manager is both a fulfilling and challenging role. Things can get stressful and intense, so one of the property management skills you need is patience. For instance, some tenants can be too demanding and difficult to deal with. Contractors might fail to follow the timeline they’ve set. Unexpected maintenance issues might occur. You also have to manage eviction notices and late payments.

However, one of your goals as a property manager is to resolve conflicts in a diplomatic way. Stay calm and collected. Listen first before reacting. Property managers with good customer service skills tend to be more patient too and ensure that complaints are handled in a courteous and peaceful way.

To help prevent conflicts due to impatience, use ExactEstate to manage property maintenance more effectively. You can easily set up work orders and assign urgency statuses. You can also automate rent collection and charges for application fees or deposit fees. To make things more flexible for you, ExactEstate offers customization options, including user access, reporting, and system settings, to cater to your varying needs.   

Assertiveness

In property management, you’ll face different situations where you have to be assertive yet not aggressive. By being assertive, you stay firm and show strength while still staying respectful. Meanwhile, aggression puts other people down and often leads to more issues.

Some tenants in affordable housing might have unreasonable requests, or contractors who are not thorough can cause you more problems. There will likely be late payments too. Hence, you should be able to make the right decisions quickly, including evicting residents if necessary.

With our violation tracking software, you can quickly communicate violations with residents. They’ll see the images and descriptions of the violations using their mobile device or computer. Thus, you won’t have to deal with manual, time-consuming violation tracking.

At the same time, you can reduce confusion and frustration among residents. Since you have access to accurate and updated information, you can take immediate action too.

Tech-savviness

Property management success includes being tech-savvy. Various technologies and innovations are continuously introduced, including software, to help make property management more efficient and seamless. Hence, if you want to stay on top of the competition, you should know how to use these tools.

With incredible property management software like ExactEstate, you get everything you need in one place — from maintenance, online payments, and accounting to tenant screening, detailed reporting, and marketing integration. Moreover, the software is customizable to satisfy your unique needs.

By maximizing technology as you manage affordable housing, you can attract high-quality tenants, retain more tenants, ensure security, and increase efficiency. Also, by collecting payments automatically, gaining access to real-time and accurate information, and streamlining applications and work orders, you can save time, stress, and money.

You can even help protect the environment by going paperless. From virtual showings to online applications, proptech in affordable housing is indeed revolutionizing the property management industry.

Final Thoughts

Your goals as a property manager include increasing ROI, ensuring security, addressing tenant and other stakeholders' concerns, and more. That is why you need property management skills like attention to detail, patience, excellent communication skills, assertiveness, and tech-savviness to succeed in the industry.

You can also use exceptional property management software like ExactEstate to enjoy a more streamlined efficient process and draw in more amazing residents.

Request a demo today to further find out how ExactEstate can give you the best rental property management solutions!