How do administrators at South Africa's leading rental agencies keep their portfolios thriving? At this year’s PayProp Roadshow, held at key venues across the country in October, I shared five essential strategies to help rental administrators optimise their businesses in time for 2025.
Obviously, technology must play a big part in that, with its potential for scaling business operations and cutting out error. But while technology can automate and simplify much of the rental administrative process, it’s the human touch that makes it truly effective.
In the rental industry, administrators are the real superheroes, as they are essential to interpreting data, spotting anomalies, and resolving issues as they arise. With technology, they can form an unbeatable combination to create a thriving, well-managed portfolio that leaves competitors in their wake.
I like to think the tips and guidance I’ve shared can be divided up into three categories: Review, Rethink and Reignite.
Review
The cleaner and more accurate the information on your portfolio is, the less time you will have to spend chasing up and verifying data, and the easier it will be to focus on your business goals. And there’s no time like the present! Start this great routine right now, and your portfolio will be in great shape for next year.
- Check on any outstanding or incomplete payments into and out of your business or trust account.
- See which tenants, if any, owe rent so you know who needs to be contacted.
- Make sure every property in your portfolio is associated with the correct owner and tenant/s in your records, or you won’t be able to allocate and pay out rent correctly.
- Review contracts that have expired and need urgent attention; are expiring this month; and are expiring in the next two months. It will help you arrange outgoing inspections and manage renewals seamlessly.
As a bonus, keeping track of these issues not only helps you prioritise tasks, it can also uncover more serious issues in the business!
Rethink
- Rethink service levels. Assigning service levels to properties and documenting it is especially helpful to colleagues who might be taking care of your portfolio while you are out of the office, as it will guide them on the level of service agreed with specific landlords.
- Rethink organisation of portfolio data. Labelling the properties in your portfolio – whatever system you use to manage it – allows you to filter your portfolio into useful searchable categories. This can be information such as the number of bedrooms, whether the property is pet-friendly or not, the service level, whether the tenant has previously defaulted on their rental payment, etc.
- Rethink income and expense categories. You should be able to easily track what each incoming and outgoing payment is for. This information helps you track your revenue and spending better, and can reveal internal fraud. With PayProp you receive an automatically generated log of all transactions, allowing you to account for payments at all times.
Reignite
The SA rental market is a consistently competitive environment for property professionals. While rental increases have risen since the pandemic, rising costs mean that real-terms growth is still quite low. Agents therefore need to be watchful for anything that might interrupt the flow of rental income – non-paying tenants, property damage and other risks.
Added to that, the industry is subject to regional and even hyper-local variations in rental metrics, with some markets experiencing higher growth while others are more sluggish. This requires agents to adapt to local market trends.
Tracking key business numbers like rental payments and increases; arrears levels; maintenance timeframes and spending; deposit balances; and other key variables will help you identify financial performance issues as well as areas for growth. It’s also crucial to keep an eye on the local market. What are local properties renting for? Which kinds of property are snapped up while others stay on the market? How is the pool of applicants in your area changing?
Whether you’re keeping an eagle eye on business performance or competitive intelligence, PayProp can help you track the key variable for rental business success. Payments are tracked in real time, giving you access to always-live, always-accurate data on rental collection, arrears and more. Meanwhile, management reports help you to benchmark your business against local competition. And whether you’re a PayProp user or not, you can get all the latest national and provincial rental market data in the quarterly PayProp Rental Index.
