Tenants have been requesting that we not send them mail at this time. With invoices scheduled to go out soon, some have asked for an emailed invoice. We always email invoices when we have an email on file but many tenants are from an older generation and prefer to have a printed copy. We have always done this for those tenants. But now, we will be transitioning to emailed invoices for everyone and if the tenant does not have an invoice, we will text it to them. We will also continue to encourage automatic ACH Bank transfers and online payments (which we’ve always done).
We have always tried to take baby steps when introducing technology to our tenants but in this case, forcing the issue is necessary. Before someone asks, the invoices are very important since we bill back utilities monthly at all of our communities. This will save us time and money by eliminating the need to print and mail paper. And, obviously this is the right time to make the change.
I’m curious what other changes operators are making to their processes during this time?
We are doing much the same with our tenants. Every time I speak with them on the phone I try to push them towards direct deposit or automatic deposits. I called through some of our tenants yesterday and got a few to switch over to automatic deposits. I feel like its a process! But you may have to offer direct deposit for folks that don’t have bank accounts or credit cards.
As far as mailers… we are just starting to work this one out. Super hard with older folks. I have a handful of tenants who don’t have internet and still have old flip phones. Let us know as you come up with new ideas!
We exclusively mail the statements. Although we have email and cell phones on files for some tenants, it is difficult to keep this up to date. Phone numbers change constantly and are not updated in our records to match because we are not informed of changes. Although we will email a one-off statement upon request, we do not email statements because it would complicate the process. We would have to figure out who has email, email to them, figure out who didn’t get an email, print statements for only that subset, and mail them. It is much easier to just mail to everyone.
Part of this is due to limitations of our management system. If it allowed to email or print statements by pushing one button and tracked who prefers email versus postal mail, then we would email statements.
We never send statements by text. The software only allows texting 1 tenant at a time, so this would be cumbersome.
If somebody prefers some type of “electronic delivery” we suggest they login to their tenant portal where they can see their account and make payments 24 hours per day. They can save a .pdf copy from there if they choose.
We constantly evolve our processes, however, we are not making any specific changes “during this time.” We did, however, use the Coronavirus as an excuse to suggest people pay online. That was more of a marketing effort to drive adoption rather than a process change.