TORONTO - Jan. 28, 2020 - Strong ongoing rental growth during a time of national slowdown makes Ontario an attractive destination for real estate investors – and a fiercely competitive market for property managers.
A joint report by Rentals.ca and Bullpen Consultancy published earlier this month forecast that average rents across Canada will increase by 3% over the coming year – much less than the 9.4% increase recorded in 2019. However, Ontario's urban areas are projected to remain as hot as ever – 4.1% growth in Ottawa, 6.9% in Toronto and a nation-leading 7.5% in Mississauga, driven by priced-out renters fleeing the 416. By contrast, cooling rental markets like Calgary and Edmonton have dragged down the national average, disguising the true picture.
Smart property managers can make the most of the opportunity in rental hotspots by adopting the right technology, according to PayProp Canada. Automating key processes will help to win the race to sign new clients – while avoiding the potential pitfalls of overextension.
How does technology give property managers a competitive edge?
Signing new clients and increasing the number of units under management brings in additional revenue, particularly while rents continue to increase, but each additional property also brings extra administrative work – particularly when it comes to managing invoices and reconciling incoming and outgoing payments. That extra overhead can put the brakes on growth and even jeopardise a property manager's ability to respond to their clients' needs.
"When we speak with property managers, we almost always find that the single biggest demand on their time is payment administration. That's not a good use of their skills – reconciling payments is repetitive, it takes a long time, and yet making a mistake when allocating funds can do huge damage to your relationship with a client," says Tom Samodol, Director of PayProp Canada.
"But those same factors make payment reconciliation ideal for automation. PayProp automates the process of collecting rent, deducting commission and paying out the correct amounts to property owners and contractors. Our clients can take care of payment processing in just a few clicks and then get back to doing work that wins and retains clients – marketing their services to property investors, helping them to manage tenancies and delivering great service."
PayProp gives property managers time to grow
For Pascual Candia, President of Venecan Property Management, PayProp was instrumental in the rapid growth of his business. "The business challenge that led me to start using PayProp was the time wasted in the rent collection process,' he says. 'I definitely knew that if I wanted to grow the business there had to be a better way than doing this process manually."
His assessment was accurate. Before adopting PayProp, the first 10 to 15 days of each month had been taken up with rent collection – half the month spent on managing existing revenue instead of seeking out opportunities for growth. Afterwards, it took just five days. Within a year, Venecan Property Management had doubled the number of properties on its books – without increasing the time spent on administering payments.
For PayProp, stories like Venecan's also demonstrate another key advantage of property technology – scalability. "Because PayProp allocates payments automatically according to rules that property managers set, reconciliation is equally easy no matter the size of the portfolio – whether you manage five properties or 500, PayProp will collect and pay out rent quickly and accurately," says Samodol.
Notes to Editors
PayProp is an automated transactional and reconciliation platform for the residential property rental sector that is both easier to use and more powerful than existing solutions offered by banks and traditional software vendors.
PayProp was launched in 2004 and has quickly grown to become one of the largest processors of rental payments for the property management industry.
PayProp is part of the Humanstate Group, an international company with subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, United States, Switzerland, Canada and South Africa.
For more information, visit: www.payprop.ca.
Contact
Tom Samodol
Director, PayProp Canada
