What are some processes you're finding challenging or overly time-consuming at the moment?

Question: I'm curious — what are some processes you're finding challenging or overly time-consuming at the moment?
Seems to me that there's always a lot of balls to juggle; month end, incident management, renewals, transfers....you name it, it's always something.
Interested in onsite perspectives, but also regional and corporate side of things too if anything comes to mind. What stands out?

I work for a company that has centralized a lot of things so on site staff can provide better customer service. I’m now obsessed with this trend of centralizing more.
Some things site staff does NOT have to do:
Take and enter payments
Create legal notices
Generate renewal offers
Take billing and portal questions
Process security deposit statements
And more.
All of these are done by teams not on site.

Megan Goodmundson … and soon to be replaced by AI ?
I’ve read of agent-less properties already.
We all better start honing our skills for a new trade.

Megan Goodmundson this is really interesting to me! How are your centralized teams tracking everything with properties? Does that require a lot more communication between your Property Managers and centralized teams, or are there just more automated systems in place?

Dan Stark absolutely everything gets entered into the account management software. And i mean everything. if phone calls come in there might be a need for the phone associate to place them on hold and try to reach the LO but I’d say that is maybe 10% of calls. Site teams prepare move out inspections and send details of what needs to be charged so whoever is preparing the deposit statement has what they need and maybe 5% of the time has to reach out to site for clarification. Maybe less than that. Renewals specialists do all the renewal offers and discussions and prepare the renewal lease and send it. Legal pay or quit notices are prepared off site and sent to site team to print and deliver to doors. Calls about billing questions, portal access, legal/ eviction questions, move out charges, renewals and even debt collection after move out is all handled centrally. No payments are accepted on site. Payment options are mail it to address given, pay online, call the central phone to pay over phone.
After working in ops for 23 years including up to portfolio manager for 10 years I’m very impressed with what i see happening.
There is even self guided tours at some locations and a centralized leasing team that helps coordinate that and do follow ups and closing.

On site team member. Right now the most time consuming is gathering documents from applicants. Proof of income is so varied that when someone doesn't work a traditional pay check job things can be difficult.

I feel like as soon as I get AP done it’s time to start again ugh lol

The variance report is my nemesis!

I’ve become a fan of centralizing everything Megan Goodmundson listed so that on-site teams can focus on the resident experience. Also becoming more open to automated, self guided leasing experiences over guided tours. Prospects across most demographics don’t want to deal with a sales person as they did ten years ago but they do want excellent, responsive, empathetic service when they move-in which begs the need for strong Resident Services oriented teams in the office.

Residents fighting with their neighbors!!! I have three sets right now and it’s a lot!!!