10 Reasons to Digitize LIHTC PMS

If you provide affordable housing, you're in it because you want to help people. This helps you get through when balancing the budget is a struggle or when connecting potential residents to the right properties feels like a labyrinth. Still, it can grind you down after a while.

Good news - you can easily balance compassionate, helpful, and affordable housing management with running a streamlined, efficient business. Affordable Housing Property Management Software from ExactEstate is here to make your life easier and your goals more achievable - here's how.

1. Simplify Tenant Applications

The ultimate goal of an effective service is to find prospective tenants an affordable housing location that suits their needs and long-term prospects. However, many tenants who need accommodation the most struggle with overcomplicated applications, making it difficult to find the best solution.

Affordable housing property management software can simplify the application process, stripping it back to what is:

• Important - what do you need from the tenant? Unnecessary or repetitive questions can be confusing or off-putting.
• Relevant—The application is a form of communication between you and the tenant. Use it to learn about the tenant and help them understand their role and responsibilities in the new property.
• Possible—Automated housing software can identify problems early on, meaning that you won't have to go through 90% of an application before realizing there's a critical issue.

2. Improve Your Team's Productivity

Convoluted procedures can demoralize staff working in affordable housing management as tenants. Very few people enjoy overcomplication, and none of them work in affordable housing. Your team will be more productive if your tasks are simplified by effective, intuitive housing software.

Software from ExactEstate can boost your team's productivity, from organizational software to creating more effective and accessible training materials. Fewer frustrations with outdated technology and archaic procedures will also improve your team's morale. This is so important—tenants need to know that you're here to provide support.

If a resident calls and gets an irritable response, what does it say about your service? Will the resident feel like help and support is available? Improvements like using bespoke property management system software have a knock-on effect that boosts performance throughout your business.

3. Streamline Your Business Goals

An organization specializing in affordable housing must meet its core business objectives to deliver a high-quality service to its residents. This means:

• Cutting waste. Wherever money is being spent unnecessarily, you need to be able to identify it and stop the leak. This money could be spent on providing better service to your tenants.

• Motivating your team. Every component of a successful organization understands the organization's final objectives and the role they play in achieving those objectives.

• Maximizing opportunities. The more successful connections you make between tenants and properties, the better prospects you can offer to key stakeholders and fundraisers. In turn, this generates opportunities to help more tenants.

The affordable housing property management software created by ExactEstate helps you identify and eliminate wasteful areas. It helps you organize your team and keep them on the same page. It helps drive your organization forward by helping you learn from successes and setbacks like analytics. High-quality housing software is a must-have to deliver the service your tenants need.

4. Optimize Your Marketing Strategy

As an affordable housing management provider, you have two key marketing targets:

• Tenants. The most important thing is to help prospective residents understand they can come to you and expect compassionate, effective housing services.

• Stakeholders. Delivering an effective service requires investment. You need to be able to identify, reach, and appeal to stakeholders.

Good property management system software allows you to manage all your leads in the appropriate place—no more flitting around between prospect inquiries and offers. All your leads will be accessible in a single, easy-to-use interface.

5. Make Maintenance Faster and More Effective

Maintenance is a complex area. Finding trustworthy local contractors to address your residents' issues promptly is labor in itself—remembering which work orders need prioritizing is another headache.

Affordable housing property management software can simplify this process. Your work orders will be stored centrally, and you can label them in terms of importance so you can address the most pressing issues immediately. It's easy to add notes so you know that the tenant is being kept up-to-date with proceedings.

Housing software from ExactEstate can help you avoid the situation where a tenant phones the office in despair, asking what became of a delayed or forgotten work order. Nobody wants to take that call - ExactEstate can help prevent it from ever needing to be made.

6. Create Strong, Simple Resident Communication Channels

When you work with ExactEstate, you can use a customized Resident Portal. This allows your tenants to:

• Find the appropriate channel for their query easily - no more finance questions sent to the maintenance department

• Receive notifications whenever you need to send them for work orders, inspections, or other services

• Easily make online payments using secure, easy-to-use property management system software

• Access your services via an intuitive mobile app

Simplifying communication makes it more positive and engaging. Communication is the foundation of any good relationship, and it's well worth the investment.

7. Make Payments Easier

Did you know that modern affordable housing property management software can help you keep 100% of the money from your sales rather than paying for processing? ExactEstate partners with Swipe4Free to offer affordable housing management organizations the ability to keep all the money they make from taking payments. This enables you to put that money to use better, improving your tenants' lives.

This system also allows you to customize the pricing of in-office and online surcharges, making payments much simpler. Payments are stressful for organizations and residents alike, so optimizing the process through intuitive property management software makes good sense!

8. Screen Tenants Quickly and Thoroughly

Assessing tenants for risk is an integral part of affordable housing management. By using bespoke property management system software, you can make your life so much easier and reduce the risk of disappointing ineligible or high-risk tenants after a promising start.

High-quality property management software can search for and identify potential issues with tenants early on, which means your team won't be wasting time on applications that would never work.

9. Improve Document Access

Your team should be able to access important documents and information anywhere. Suppose they're showing a tenant around a property with a tablet. In that case, that tablet should be connected to a central system that can provide them with the answers to any potential resident questions. This is all possible with the housing software offered by ExactEstate.

Likewise, if you're away from the office but need to answer a vital question, this affordable housing property management software means you can answer in just a couple of clicks.

10. Know Help is Available Whenever You Need It

In the old days of affordable housing management organizations, IT issues were usually solved by one overworked and frustrated individual. Today, if you experience issues with your housing software or any other part of your process, you can contact support and expect an immediate response.

Knowing that a well-trained team is behind you, ready to troubleshoot issues, reduces the stress of running an affordable housing management organization. It's well worth the investment.

Using Affordable Housing Property Management Software

If you strive to help people as much as possible through affordable housing, try the best property management system software today. We guarantee that you'll streamline operations for management teams and people in need by improving the screening process, streamlining payment processing, boosting your marketing strategies, etc.

And you don't have to look far for high-quality and efficient property management software. ExactEstate is a premier provider of affordable housing management software and solutions. These can help streamline your organization's goals, boost staff engagement and morale, and make communication with tenants much simpler and more effective. 

Discover how by setting up a demo.

Request a Demo