Happy Belated New Year to all our Customers,
We are all ready to move on from COVID, but it seems we will need to exercise some restraint as we work through this tough period of increasing positive cases. These last 10 months have been challenging for everyone and we’re confident we have done a good job adapting to the ever changing environment. As you probably already know, we held our 2021 planning meeting a few weeks ago with our entire team. This was an incredibly productive meeting and I wanted to share some of our initiatives for this year, which will positively impact your association.
Zoom
When COVID hit last March, like many of you, I had heard of Zoom, but never used it. We implemented it in the business and it has proved to be a tremendous success for both board meetings and annual unit owner meetings. Attendance at annual meetings increased on average by 40%, with many unit owners attending meetings for the first time. For board meetings, it has allowed us to easily share financial reports, access Buildium during meetings and allowed everyone to attend the meeting easily. This also has improved our employees job satisfaction and quality of life. As a business owner in 2021, these are incredibly important in retaining good people and hiring people as we continue to grow. We plan to continue to use Zoom as our primary meeting medium and we are looking to enhance our relationship with this technology and considering a transition to their phone system in parallel to their video meetings.
Automatic Monthly Condominium Payments
Today roughly 50% of unit owners use our Buildium Portal to make their monthly condominium payments to their association. We want to increase this to 75% in 2021. While we understand that some unit owners will always want to manually write out a physical check, (and that’s not a problem) we believe that there’s a significant number who can be converted to auto-monthly payments. The best feature of our system is that the fees automatically update every year with your new budget and unit owners don’t have to remember the new amount, or change their monthly payment with their online banking. This can also have a positive impact on the association’s cash flow at the beginning of every month.
Online 6d and Financing Questionnaires
In the last couple of months we transitioned our request process to enable unit owners to pay for these forms directly through our website. This eliminated the need to charge the association and bill back the unit owner, something that confused many boards when reviewing financial statements. Given the dramatic increase in the volume of refinancing and condo sales over the last year, this streamlined process has also been welcomed by real estate agents and mortgage companies, who now get these forms without delay.
Improve Welcome Packets to New Unit Owners
We will be improving our systems to transition new unit owner information, when a unit is sold. We are now collecting the contact information for the new unit owner during the 6d process. This will enable us to reach out electronically with a simple form to capture all the necessary
information for the association. As we all know, communication is key and it is imperative we capture and share appropriate information with new owners right from the start.
Preferred Vendors
Many of our customers struggle to find that “perfect” vendor for certain services, to fit their budget. We will be looking to expand our vendor pool in 2021 and offering our customers the opportunity to find the best fit for their needs. We will be reaching out to new and established vendors, across all industries with the hopes of finding further value for our customers.
New Customers
We currently manage 22 condominium associations and 21 multi-family properties, making us a mid-sized management company. Each of our customers receives customized services for their particular needs. We have made some very focused plans for our continued growth. Going forward we will be offering two types of services. For new customers with less than 25 units, we will offer an administrative contract, focused on bookkeeping, financial reports and advice only on an as-needed basis. Our primary focus will be growing our business with mid-sized customers who are looking for a partnership. We meet prospects all the time who see their management company as nothing more than the janitor and these are not for us moving forward. We will be seeking out associations where there’s a mutual respect between board members and their management company. Our goal is to add four to five new customers this year, but also want to assure all of our current customers that our growth will not impact the quality of service we provide to them.
RGR Realty Group
As many of you know, we also operate a brokerage and assist our clients with both buying and selling units. We can be very helpful connecting unit owners, who for one reason or another, need to make a change. We recently heard from a unit owner in Weymouth who wanted to stay within their community, but move to a unit on the top floor of the building. We were able to reach out to that community and it transpired that five unit owners were considering selling. We are helping the unit owner sell their unit, and purchase a top floor unit. It’s a win win for the community.
One of our multi-family customers is interested in purchasing distressed units within condominium communities and bringing them back to life and selling them to suitable buyers. This is also a win for your community, as we are in control of the process and overseeing the rehab for our client. As units are transformed, so is the community and the property values for everyone increase.
Process and Procedures
At our planning meeting we took a step back and analyzed what is working well, and what areas we could work on improving within our operation. We believe our staff’s communication and follow through are strong and effective, but are open to your thoughts and feedback to improve in this area.
We will be reviewing our administrative functions, task management in Buildium, capital project management and accounting and financial management… all for our customers’ benefit for increased efficiency.
Reserve Balances
Many of our customers had positive reserve growth in 2020, with a conservative approach to spending with COVID and fairly limited snow removal expenses for the year. This, coupled with regular monthly contributions to their reserve accounts, landed many of our customers with reserve accounts in excess of $250k. With these growing reserves we looked into proper FDIC insurances for such large deposits, and found that further protection could be utilized with other banks that carry DIF (Depositor Insurance Fund).
If your Association falls into this category of having funds in excess of $250k, your property manager will be following up with your Board in the coming months to see if you would be interested in taking up these opportunities for further protection of your Association funds.
RGR Staff Update
The COVID crisis and 2020 was certainly a challenge and we all needed to adapt and change to meet the daily needs and requirements for effective property management. Our industry saw many seasoned property managers retire early, while others simply “burned out” and moved on to completely different industries. We too experienced some of these challenges. Our existing team was able to support some transitions and we were fortunate to bring on some new talent that is working out exceptionally well. Our team now includes:
Mitch Johanson – Director of Condominium Management
Dominik Kozlowski – Property Manager
Jon Willis – Property Manager
Matt Hooper – Property Manager
Andrew Caruso- Property Manager
Ursula Ryan – Controller
Christie Moore – Accounting Manager
Jaryd Delehanty – Accounting Assistant
Mike Fennessy – Maintenance Technician
Justin Bartrug – Maintenance Technician
Kevin Gallagher – Maintenance Technician
As we continue to grow, we will add to our team with similar driven, professional, and charismatic people!
Snow Budgets
As we are barely into the second week of February, it’s no secret that this winter has already dropped a good amount of snow for most of the properties we manage. With more snow on the way and a less than positive outlook for the remainder of February into March, we believe that all Boards should plan on the full utilization of their snow removal budget allocations, if not
more. 2020 was a good snow year in the sense that most associations were under budget, allowing for these “extra” snow removal dollars to be allocated where needed and to help level the entire budget for the year. This does not look to be the case for 2021 and everyone should plan accordingly.
In Closing
I mentioned earlier that we consider every association as our “partner”. As your partner, we are in this together, through good times and bad. We will always strive to “do the right thing”, find value and efficiency for your operation, and simply help your community function a little more harmoniously. And as your partner, we thought it important to share these updates about our company and what we are seeing happening in our world, so we can all take on 2021 with confidence and success.
Please expect my call as I will continue to reach out to our Boards of Trustees and check in from time to time to see how we are doing and ways we can improve our partnership.
Regards,
Ronan
President
RGR Property Management
