Property Managing the Coronavirus: Business as Usual?

“…There is nothing new under the sun.”

King Solomon in Ecclesiastes 1:9

Well, I’ve been doing this property management thing for a while now and this coronavirus is new.  The sick game of infection tag (where you actually don’t have to even touch but be in a 6-foot radius) is baffling and scary. 

But the underlying trend of “social distancing” has been growing rapidly in property management.  That’s not new at all.  Technology has made distancing all the rage in the name of cost and efficiency.   Marketing houses on-line, self-showings, on-line requirements and applications, on-line payments, and e-signing leases make meeting almost obsolete.  Right?

I mean, who wants to meet with the public?  And from the public’s perspective, who wants to meet with the property managers?  Both parties would probably be happiest just transacting impersonally.  It’s faster and both parties get what they want.

When this crisis first started, it led to going through our processes to see where we had physical contact with customers or were the cause of other people (Realtors, vendors, etc.) having contact with our customers at our direction or with our permission.

We changed the following business practices this week:

1. No in-person home showings by us of vacant properties
2. No showings of tenant-occupied properties by us or other Realtors
3. No in-person lease signings
4. Suspended in-home quarterly inspections
5. No in-home repairs on non-major systems

We want everyone to be safe and support the government’s efforts on tamping down and eliminating this threat.

Technology allows us to still operate the property management business and serve our customers under these conditions.  So I’m thankful for that.  However, it was eye-opening to me on how little of an adjustment it was to batten the hatches.  And I wonder if this is just the excuse property managers are looking for to make these changes permanent.

I hope not.  I find one of the toughest things to decide on with all the technology offerings at our disposal is how much of the people element we want to wring out of the system in the name of “efficiency” (I’m not sure how much more efficient some of this actually makes us, but that’s for another blog…).  The personal stuff makes us a company, not just property management robots.  I feel there’s a ton of value there.

I like meeting our owners, tenants, and vendors in-person.  I can try to make some business case that it helps us get better service, improves retention, improves Google ratings, blah blah blah… But at the end of the day, I want to like being at work!   And that has a lot to do with personal relationships, the kinds that are formed best without “distancing”.

Business with coronavirus may be the culmination of where property management has been going since the birth of the internet.  But I think we’ll all be poorer if this ever becomes business as usual.

Happy Landlording!  And Stay Safe!