The Difficulties Surrounding Student Housing Apartments

You may mistakenly believe that student housing apartments are similarly managed to multifamily units, when in fact many unique challenges surround college apartments, especially from the onset of the pandemic. Here are the difficulties that you may face when managing a student housing property and how you can solve them:

College Students May Not Pay Their Rent on Time

Even low-income apartments for college students experience this problem with college rentals. Since most college students come from living with their families, budgeting their own finances can be a struggle. Therefore, late payments may occur during their stay in your student housing apartments.

To prevent this from happening, we always recommend that you should clarify the deadlines for college rentals. This helps your tenants become more mindful of paying their rent on time. Furthermore, you can also impose late rent penalties on your tenants to deter them from getting behind on their rent. You could also switch your systems and allow your individual renters to be responsible for their own rent. This system contrasts with the widespread practice of having all tenants be collectively accountable for the unit’s rent. This way, you can quickly point out the tenant with a balance due.

You can also ask for one or more cosigners for college rentals which can guarantee your rent is paid, even if your tenants cannot.

While this system is not easily implemented for most student housing apartments, it can be possible using cloud-based management software like ExactEstate. In fact, ExactEstate’s software can simplify your communication channels and help you manage your tenants more easily than before.

Your Mailrooms Can Become a Nightmare

Most student housing apartments are not designed to handle a deluge of mail every day. And you can only imagine the struggle of operating and managing parcels in college apartments where students are more likely to order from Amazon and other online stores. In fact, since the COVID-19 pandemic began, this problem has become more prominent in student housing apartments. This trend results from more frequent buying tendencies of college-aged individuals that reside in your apartment. So, we won’t be surprised if your student housing apartments are experiencing holiday levels of mail volume every day.

We see two ways of solving this dilemma:

• First, you can install package lockers in your college apartments. These intelligent solutions are safe and make it easy for your tenants to access their mail anytime. Plus, you’ll no longer need to worry about their mail with these package lockers installed.

• Second, you can use a cloud-based property management software integrated with mail management. ExactEstate’s cloud-based technologies can make your lives more accessible despite the onslaught of daily parcels and groceries.

Mail management can be an easy task for student housing apartments with modernized systems. We highly recommend that you invest in acquiring or creating one. This investment is a sure-fire way of supporting even a ridiculous amount of parcels. In fact, it’s one of the best ways to improve resident retention in your college apartments.

College Apartments Needs To Promote Productivity and Healthy Lifestyles

It’s important to remember that your student housing apartments are not just ordinary residences. In fact, what makes college apartments unique is their connection with their tenants. We mean that you’ll have college students in different stages of their academic careers. For instance, you’ll have a freshman trying to figure out where the laundry room is. On the other hand, you’ll have a graduating tenant in the library all day. Despite their differences, they all share one thing: calling your apartment their home.

Therefore, it’s crucial to ensure that your student housing apartments do not contribute to their burnout. Your college apartments need to give essential solutions to the unique educational needs of your tenants.

For instance, you should invest in employees that can expediently respond to their needs. You can achieve this by keeping your employee morale high.

But how exactly can you achieve this, given the extraordinary and laborious demands of student housing apartments?

The answer lies in your ability to quickly identify gaps in your system through real-time information. Cloud-based management software like ExactEstate helps property managers monitor their employees' performance, make tasks more straightforward, and generate a detailed report of their properties.

Furthermore, you can invest in on-site gyms and create study nooks within the premises.

College Students Need Extra Attention

Like we said before, college students are a particular type of demographic to have as tenants. Similar to the first problem we outlined above, college students are less likely to have experience with independent lifestyles. Hence, they may need help with issues that arise in their apartments. For instance, they may contact your support staff for matters they can instead settle among themselves. Or maybe they expect that your support staff is always on standby to fulfill their needs. While this is understandable for their first weeks in your student housing apartments, you should be able to facilitate a transition in their lifestyle.

Having specialized staff for these tenants is crucial to maintaining customer satisfaction. But more than just keeping a service staff is the ability to maintain clear communications with all your tenants. Thankfully, cloud-based management software allows for precise and accessible communication channels, with the ability to maintain 24-hour technical support for everyone. There are also email templates that you can freely use to communicate with your college tenants.

You can even involve students in managing your property by hiring them as contact persons. At the same time, they reside in your college apartments. In fact, this strategy is a great way to reduce behavioral issues within your premises.

Parents Will Contact You As Well

Of course, since college students are still dependent on their families, it’s only natural for their parents to desire a constant connection with you as a landlord. Parents want to ensure that the college rentals they pay for are put into good use, from concerns about safety to the quality of life in your student housing apartments.

Maintaining a digitized property management system allows you to clearly communicate with college students’ parents. So, it’s a good idea to invest in one.

Student Housing Apartment May Be Prone to Safety Issues

College students can be rowdy. In fact, most tenants use your student housing apartments for partying.

This is a safety issue for property managers, especially those who don’t have an effective visitor management system. Many tenants can be turned off by disruptive behaviors such as noise and alcohol. Furthermore, the lack of security within your premises presents an actual danger to your tenants. This is especially true in instances where students can get out of hand at their parties, which can affect the studying of your other tenants.

Moreover, these safety issues can also lead to higher maintenance costs. Therefore, even low-income apartments for college students still need an effective visitor management system to make their premises safer and more conducive. You can achieve higher security through cloud-based technologies that efficiently monitor visitors in student housing apartments.

Manage Your Property with ExactEstate

Managing student housing apartments can be challenging. After all, unlike families that can help each other out, students still need extra attention and have special needs to address. ExactEstate’s extensive features repository allows property managers to efficiently manage their college apartments without breaking a sweat.

If you want to modernize your property management, please contact our team to schedule a free live demo of our product.