What Millennial Renters Want in Boston, MA

Boston property managers regard millennials as desirable tenants because they tend to be long-term renters who are not looking to buy a home soon and move out.

But how do you attract millennials to live on your property? What do millennials want from an apartment?

If you are you a Boston landlord looking for millennial tenants, you need to know what millennials are looking for so that you can meet (or even exceed) their expectations.

If you are millennial renter looking for a modern, technologically up-to-date apartment, it’s helpful to know what amenities to look for so that you won’t find you’ve made a mistake after moving in.

Who are Millennials?

Millennials are young people of the 21st Century and desire high connectivity to the internet and environmentally-conscious ways to live their lives.

They are born between 1977 and 2000. They make up 25% of the population.

The Future of Millennial-Style Apartment Complexes 

Millennials own fewer cars than previous generations, so millennial complexes are ideally situated for walking or taking public transportation to shopping, dining, and entertainment.

Millennials are comfortable with efficiently designed studios and one-bedrooms. Micro kitchens are also ok as long as they contain the latest in kitchen technology.

The ideal apartment complex for millennials will include the following:

• A social room for hanging out. 
• An entertainment space with a big screen for watching movies. 
• Wellness facilities with fitness on demand videos. 
• Ground floor commercial space such as a coffee shop. 
• Digital programs that make life easier. An example is LaundryView, enabling the user to note how many washers and dryers are available and to receive a text alert when the laundry is done. 

Boston’s Millennial Villages 

For millennial renters finding an affordable space in Boston is not easy. One solution that Boston has come up with is the millennial village.

The city is proposing to build 10,000 or more small units of housing close to public transportation with shared common spaces and ground floor amenities.

Technology: The Number One Requirement for Boston Property Managers 

Property managers absolutely must be online to connect with millennial renters. A “modern” property manager understands that millennials prefer to communicate with texts or emails rather than via phone calls.

The internet is the millennials’ first-choice tool for everything from finding an apartment to ordering food delivery.

They do not look through newspapers and circle apartment listings with a magic marker so don’t place rental ads that way; instead, make use of real estate websites that can connect a searcher with your website where millennials can look at and apply for your available units online.

Once millennials become your tenants, you must make it possible for them to pay their rent and make maintenance requests online.

It’s also advantageous to showcase everything about your property that is eco-friendly on social media as millennial renters care about their environmental impact.

A Checklist for Landlords and Millennial Renters 

The following is an ideal list of what property managers need to have in place and what millennial renters should look for in an ideal apartment.

• Cable and internet accessibility, complex-wide Wi-Fi, and a multitude of indoor and outdoor electrical outlets for charging mobile devices. 
• Low-flow, water-conserving toilets, and shower heads. 
• Energy-efficient appliances and programmable thermostats. 
• Solar panels, wind power, or other sources of renewable energy. 
• Energy-saving light bulbs. 
• Good insulation to slash utility bills. 
• Recycling and composting services on site. 
• Laundry facilities and dry-cleaning drop-off/pick-up. 
• Pet-friendliness – the majority of millennials own pets. 

Why Modern Rental Units are Good for Both Landlords and Millennial Tenants 

If you are landlord interested in upgrading your rental property to attract millennials, the initial expense of modernizing your complex will pay off over time by increasing the value of your property.

Your investment in improving your building will result in happy tenants who keep renewing their leases and reducing apartment turnover.

Find a Good Professional Property Management Company 

As an experienced property management company in Boston, Premier Property Solutions understands how to manage a property with millennials in mind.

We will take over the responsibility of managing your property so that both you and your tenants are happy in a modern, well-functioning building. Please contact us to see how we can help you.

Importance of Cleaning Your Condo Building

January 1st marks new beginning for all who are looking to update their lifestyle & business operations. We all set ourselves out to have resolutions because we know old habits die hard. 

 A New Year's Resolution for Property Owners

Property management and condo cleaning fall into this category. It's essential to add value and keep tenants feeling secure about the fact they have a reliable property management team that always prepares for the coming months to start the year.

To discuss the importance of condo cleaning to start 2016, we compiled a short bucket list to get landlords and property owners what they need to do to make their building and its tenants feel refreshed for a successful 2016.

5 Ways to Improve Your Business Operations

Cleaning does not only mean to wipe down windows and mopping hallways floors in your building. It also means to have quality information updated in your business records, and online human engagement.

Not all property owners are expected to be tech savvy. 

Understand that consumers need a sense of tangibility in order to feel like they are involved in their purchases. In the case of rental operations and real estate, this applies to tenants who have made the decision to set up their living quarters within your condo building.

Effective communication methods is the crux of our suggested resolutions for 2016.

This improves the tenant-to-property owner relationship feel trustworthy and prompt, not having to wait numerous days or weeks before problems get resolved.

Whether they are renting or bought the condo outright, their sense of tangibility comes in the form of these resolutions:

• Frequent Website Updates - You will need to update your website at least once a week or whenever their is a change in your operation and regulations for your tenants to take note of. This not only connects the tenant and landlord faster via mobile devices. A great way to stand out to your tenants is how progressive your service is by using an online community builder. 

Visit our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, pages to see our strategy.

• Cleaning and Decorating With Seasonal Appeal - Make sure that if the Holidays are over, don't wait until March to take down your Christmas decor in the building. Send out information  about live Christmas tree collections for recycling, and take down Holiday lighting and ornaments down as January 1st comes. Update each se

• Enact a No-Smoking Plan - If you are the type of landlord who is lenient towards having pets in your rental units, you should implement a non-smoking environment. This will help keep the walls in your units from yellowing with nasty nicotine stains on them. Especially if you have carpets, just like your lungs, they will suffer and smell tremendously from the second-hand smoke. This also reduces the chance of halloween disaster stories and other holidays in the building or on the property grounds.

• Reward Tenants For Their Compliance - If a higher condo fee is assessed for the new year, or if your tenants have collectively helped you receive a government-subsidized rebate check for reducing your energy costs with sustainable property management, reward them for being a tenant. The best ways to carry this rewarding out is to promote prizes to them like flowers on each tenant's birthday, or hold a toy drive for the children in the building, or picnics in the spring and summer months. 

• Fire Safety - There were many stories of fires happening in condos the past few years in the Boston area in Allston, Brighton, Cambridge, and the Back Bay Area. Make sure that the fire safety regulations are either printed and given to the tenants every time they begin a new lease, and/or sent to them via email.

Final Thoughts on Cleaning your Condo Building

New Years resolutions can be hard to maintain once you make them. But with the right property management team, you can stay motivated to uphold your promise for updating your images, business, and character online and offline.

Have you created your own list of New Years resolutions? Do they match up to our list?

Tell us how you have used New Years resolutions and cleaning to push your tenant's lifestyle and condo building's image forward.

Why Emerging Technologies Always Win For Property Management

Why "Property Management" Rhymes With "Technology" Today

Cyber Monday is a day for great discount deals on tech products. But we should observe the impact of technology in the property management industry as well. In an ever-changing industry like property management, the means for advancement will be based on the rate at which information can be compiled with great customer service.

Information is the most prized possession in all industries. Accessibility with top quality software tools to attain data and the right personnel for a property management company will give them an edge over their competition in the real estate market. You will make life easier for yourself and your tenants by using web-based applications, research software, and messaging systems that help them stay updated as well as resolve issues including water heater installations, new parking requirements, fire emergencies, moving days, illegal tenants warnings, repair updates, board member voting meetings, and new lighting in the building.

With social media and other web-based applications that can manage live chats, there is no excuse for a property management to not regulate their operations with higher results of success.

Marketing via Social Media: Technically Fast, Less Furious Tenants

Technology increases the response rate and efficient communication methods for tenants to know what is coming from the residential property management team. Without it, your tenants will be trapped feeling like prisoners in your building from potential problems that arise. Do you want them to wait for a crew to get to their problem with a delayed response? The matter could be urgent and need immediate attention. If not, it could potentially cost lives and more money than you can afford to fix. 

Here are some examples of those problems:

• Broken thermostats- Nobody likes to deal with Boston winters with just a blanket, sweats, and seeing their own breath inside the house. A quick fix to thermostats can make a big difference for tenants who don't know how to fix a thermostat. But if you have social media and someone on a 24-hour call from the property management crew, you can address this issue immediately, instead of having to wait a day or two. With technology, you can also track the heating systems in all your units in a centralized database so you know which ones have recurring issues.

• Trash days- Tenants tend to forget what days the trash goes out after their September 1st move-in to their unit. Being connected with your tenants, you send them a reminder about the trash day and help make the garbage in your place go away for the week.

• Flood watches- If you have a basement floor that is below the ground level, it's good to let your tenants know that there is a pending flood watch. You can help them take precautions by sending a text message alert sent to their mobile devices. If the property management is connected online via social media with their tenants, they can let them know immediately by that means.

• Water shutoffs- Sometimes the Department of Public Works may be doing some street work that affects the water in the units of your building. That could affect a tenant who showers in the morning and make them late for work because they either forgot or didn't see the postings in the lobby or the hallway about the date and time. Of course, your tenant didn't plan accordingly, but they could have if they had gotten a reminder message about it the day prior to the shutoff via email, text, or on their social media channels from the management.

• Fire Emergencies- We have all heard crazy stories that will make you scream of people getting trapped inside their apartment unit or condo during a fire because they didn't get the message in time to evacuate the building. When it comes to these situations, you should make sure that all of your tenants get a message on their mobile devices for points of egress in the building. Implementing a centralized contact database of your tenants and units into an emergency alert SMS chain that can be made similar to an AMBER ALERT message can be a life saver.

These are just ideas of what can be dire situations that can be avoided by being connected as much as possible via Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, or whatever can give you an instant message. Also, social media can market your units to potential new tenants, and showcase the luxury or image that you are putting forth on a site like Pinterest and Instagram for them to leave comments and share your posts.

Recordkeeping and Reducing Error In Management

Recordkeeping is the means of knowing what someone needs and to track their history. When you have the right property management system in place, you can reduce the double entry of information after uploading reports from exported data. This is how you can track percentage increases and decreases in various areas of the business; accounting and rent collection, work orders, hiring personnel, screening tenants, and retention versus new leases signed to fill the units. 

Convenience of Payments

Having people pay their rent online via your property management software can help automate payments from your tenants. Direct debits to their accounts can save you the hassle of chasing a tenant down for a check. Especially if the check is mailed one to an away address, if the owner or landlord of the building does not live there.

Final Thoughts

What type of experiences have you had as a tenant or landlord that either saved yourself a headache, your money, or your life when dealing with issues that come forth by usage of technology? Has this added expense made a difference in your operations?

Tell us some of your examples that made life easier and faster for you and your tenants.