We’ve recently been getting some feedback from properties that are dealing with residents who choose to pay their rent through their bank’s bill pay system instead of using their properties online rent payments through ResidentPortal. For those who are wondering what the big deal is, I will briefly explain.
The Problem
Properties that use our ResidentPay system don’t have to process any of the payments that are made through our online payment system. Residents log-in to ResidentPortal through their property’s website and can choose to pay their rent from a credit card, debit card, or e-check. Once they enter their information and submit it, the rent is automatically processed and integrated into the property’s accounting software—eliminating data entry, paper handling, and trips to the bank.
When a resident pays their rent through their bank’s bill pay, the bank receives the payment and then writes a check which has to be mailed to the property. Depending on whether or not you use check scanning, the work varies for an office manager, but it’s estimated that every time a resident pays their rent online it saves the property five dollars!
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With today’s webinar being the last of the year we wanted to pick a topic that had a big impact on the industry in 2010. All of the major national tradeshows this year, including the recent NMHC Tech Conference, have discussed mobile websites. So we went back and looked at our industry mobile analytics and were quite surprised with the data and the increase in usage.
Overall Traffic
According to our portfolio data, mobile traffic was only making up 1.3 percent of overall traffic to property websites. Currently, mobile traffic makes up 6.8 percent of overall traffic to property websites. That’s a 423 percent increase in mobile traffic! We’re confident that these numbers will continue to rise from month to month, and the need for mobile websites will increase to accommodate the growing percentage of prospects and residents that want to access property websites via phone. Will we be above 15 percent by summer?
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We’ve been getting some great feedback for our iPad app
SiteTablet that functions as both a leasing and resident tool. We’ve added some cool new features to it that we think make it even better and we’re excited to share!
No internet? No problem. If you don’t end up going with the 3G iPad, or for any reason you don’t have internet, you can still show floor plans, photos, virtual tours and amenities of your property with the SiteTablet. You can even have prospects fill out a guest card when not connected to the internet, and then once you connect the guest cards will be sent to you and integrated into your property management software.
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