Trending: Minions and Property Management.

Published Date: 2015-03-26

Happiness is great property management, profitable real estate and cute little yellow guys called Minions.

What do these Property Management Trends look like?
- Management of a Property. 82% of respondents say they do all their property management themselves, up 10% over 2013, but consistent with 2011 and 2012. Respondents also use property managers (17%) and corporate housing management companies (7%) to manage their properties. Only 1% use friends and family.
- Property Management Software. Similar to the past two years, the majority of respondents (51%) say they do not use any form of corporate property management software to manage their rental properties. 24% use basic spreadsheets, followed by 19% who use accounting software, such as QuickBooks™.
- Rental Documents. We asked respondents, where did you get your rental documents, such as leases? The most (35%) say they found their documents on the Internet, followed closely by 34% who say they wrote their own documents. Only 16% say they paid an attorney to have their documents drafted.
- Leasing Trends. 44% of respondents say they meet potential renters before leasing their properties (down from 53% in 2013). While many property owners still rely on email as the primary method of communicating with potential renters, other forms of communication are becoming popular, including FaceTime, Skype and texting. We’ll continue to watch these trends in 2015.
What do these Corporate Housing Real Estate Properties look like?
- Property Size / Number of Bedrooms. The highest percentage of independent corporate housing real estate rentals continues to be two-bedrooms (41%). Consistent with 2013, 29% of respondents say their rental properties have three bedrooms or more. In contrast, in the full-service corporate housing industry, 50% of the rentals are one-bedrooms. The availability of additional bedrooms makes the independent corporate housing segment an attractive option to renters.
- Property Type. Whereas the majority of corporate rental properties in the full-service corporate housing industry are apartments, only 17% of rental properties are apartments in the independent corporate housing real estate market, according to survey results. Single-family homes continue to make up the largest percentage of properties (26%) accounted for in this survey, followed by low-rise condominiums (19%).
- Property Locations. Consistent with previous years, independent corporate rentals are fairly even distributed between urban, business districts (46%) and suburban areas (45%).
- What’s Included in Your Rental. This year, we saw all-time highs in respondents who offer property manuals (52%), welcome gifts (39%) and iPod docks (24%). We were surprised to find that offering high-speed Internet in corporate housing rentals hit an all-time low, while offering Netflix as a rental item débuted on the list with an 11% inclusion rate.