Multifamily Resident Portals Moving to the Next Level via NREI Readers Write

Multifamily owners, operators and tenants have embraced resident portals as a convenient conduit for paying rent and submitting work orders. Now industry forward-thinkers are looking at additional ways to make these websites more relevant so they will draw visitors on a daily basis.

Clearly, multifamily portals designed to accomplish business between landlords and tenants make sense from an operational standpoint. Money comes in online and is routed electronically, and these payments automatically update the ledger and statements via the accounting system. Or, if someone submits a work order, it will route to the appropriate person. Residents can check on the progress, and once their job is completed they receive an automated notification. Nobody has to touch anything from the operational side, which can cut down processing expenses significantly.

Yet these “Version 1.0” portals provide little motivation for residents to log on frequently. So what else can they be engaged to do? Simply put, Internet portals provide a launch point for people when they go online. General portals like AOL, MSN and Yahoo! include information from multiple sources, such as news, stocks, weather and other items of interest. Niche portals – like those being used in multifamily – are specialized to emphasize a particular interest or subject area. To that end, multifamily owners are starting to customize their portals with information pertinent to their individual communities. This may include:

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