Owning luxury real estate is highly profitable, but if you’re not using technology, you’re probably not running as efficiently as possible. Technology has a way of making life easy, and when it comes to managing rental properties, it’s a must-have.
Here’s why luxury property owners need technology to maximize profits and minimize losses.
1. Technology can do more than humans
There’s no denying that technology can accomplish more in a shorter period of time than humans. In most cases, if you can automate a process with an application, it’s going to be more efficient and accurate.
One of the best examples in the luxury real estate market is using customer relationship management (CRM) software to manage your properties, deals, partners, commissions, and inquiries.
You’ll find that using CRM software because it eliminates the need for manual tools like Excel. Spreadsheets are nice and can serve a purpose, but they won’t help you perform your tasks faster. On the contrary, spreadsheets will slow you down.
If your goal is to increase profitability, you need support from technology that will help you get things done quicker and with less effort. That’s where CRM technology comes into play. With the right system, you can interact with existing tenants, prospective buyers, partners, and clients all in one spot. You’ll be able to collect demographic data on everyone who makes an inquiry and filter them out automatically if they don’t qualify.
One of the best features a CRM has to offer is the ability to send automated emails. You’ll have a better chance of closing deals when you maintain a database of email addresses because you can reach out to them with messages to nurture them into a conversion.
Whether you want potential homebuyers to schedule showings for available properties or you need to send out notices to existing tenants, you can do it all inside of a CRM system.
Automated email also allows you to send follow-up emails to potential buyers after a showing, which gives you a better chance at closing deals before people wander off and find another property.
2. Your time is valuable
You can’t run a profitable real estate investment business if you’re required to manage all the tedium associated with owning properties. For example, if you’re manually tracking tenant rent payments, repairs and maintenance, and creating all of your own marketing materials from scratch, you’re wasting your time.
There are plenty of real estate apps that will handle these and other tasks for you quickly and easily. For example, simply having a tenant portal on your website makes it easy to collect rent online and schedule repairs and maintenance from tenants who fill out a form. This alone can eliminate a lot of back-and-forth you’d otherwise have playing phone tag with your tenants.
3. You can access pre-made marketing templates
Have you ever needed to create a marketing flyer or advertisement, and all you have access to are Microsoft Word templates? That’s a big problem because those free (and even some paid) templates don’t usually cut it for marketing.
If you want to sell or rent a luxury property, you need high-end marketing materials. You can’t use a template that looks like it was made in the 1990s with clipart pasted onto the sides. If you’re not a graphic designer, this is a problem. You can hire a professional designer, but you probably don’t have time for that. Plus, designers who create from scratch are expensive.
Thankfully, there are many popular websites that act as repositories for editable marketing materials, and the products are reasonably priced. For instance, Envato Elements is an excellent , posters, and even logos for both the web and print. The specific file formats vary by product, but you’ll get access to the original, editable images either in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.
When you use pre-made flyer templates for your ads, you don’t have to worry about going back and forth with a designer or wasting thousands of dollars. You’ll pay less than $100 in most cases, and you’ll have a beautiful design you can customize yourself.
Technology makes you more profitable
It’s not hard to see how embracing technology will make you a more profitable luxury . If you haven’t already started using apps to handle your repetitive tasks, start today. At the very least, use an app to track information related to your rental properties and find out what other investors are using. You might be pleasantly surprised to see how apps can simplify your responsibilities.