The word ‘vacancy’ is bad in real-estate rent or leasing industries. Vacant lots and areas mean lack of optimization and point to the fact that you’re not getting the best return from your investment. Each manager of properties is striving to get 100% occupancy rates and eliminate all vacancies. Amidst the pandemic businesses especially struggled to retain tenants and now they’re working hard to bring old ones back or have new ones occupy their space. In the epicenter of this, we have software for commercial property management. It’s a tool that, as experience shows, has been very helpful for managers who are trying to maximize occupancy rates and reduce vacancies. How? Let’s find out!

Why are there more vacancies in the first place?

Covid struck the world hard. It’s more than 18 months after it started but people are still very new to the change and the impact which have occurred around them. Businesses, especially in the service sector, have struggled trying to regain steady cash-flows and their revenues are still hurting. But the main numbers which indicate the health of the overall global economy showed that the troubles were short-lived and that we’re kind of back to normal. So why are there so much more vacancies for managers to deal with?

First off, you have the work-from-home boom which a lot of businesses fell in love with. Studies have shown that the increase of employee happiness whilst working from home is more temporary and they spend more time in doing the same amount of work. Besides, it’s much more difficult to have everyone on the same page, especially with multicultural or just larger teams, in general.

Next up, you have small businesses that are fearful of the ever-looming restrictions that might lead them to not being able to do any business whatsoever. So, how can software for commercial property management help this and how have many renters and managers been using it for their benefit?

Software for commercial property management – what role does it play?

Since we began discussing the help of property management software for commercial renters and managers, let’s dive into the specifics

Case studies and research by businesses showed that during the pandemic, businesses who were tenants, wanted more flexibility. In case of sudden changes, they wanted to have clauses in their contracts that allowed them to opt out. Since managers weren’t prepared for such a situation, they weren’t able to offer contract amendments and only understood the right course of action post-factum. Besides, even with the new knowledge, it took the managers too long to prepare the documents and, fearful of going into sort of limbo without guarantees of being allowed to continue their business, enterprises just moved out instead of re-negotiating.

Software makes it much easier to draft legal documents as you can prepare a template, upload it and send to everyone. So, instead of losing tenants left and right, you could’ve been proactive and offer amendments to keep them for longer. Whilst it’s not always 100% profitability due to the concessions having to be made, it’s 100% occupancy which sooner or later, will result in the highest possible profits.

SOFT4RealEstate can help you sign and approve documents digitally, with an e-signature, meaning that amendments and changes to contracts can be fulfilled very quickly, making it easier to keep business for longer, in this ever-changing business climate of today.

Is the value of such software sustainable?

But with one very concrete benefit listed, many sceptics could still look at this software and think whether it’s worth all the investment. To begin with, the investment, especially when compared against the potential benefits – isn’t that grand. Licensing commercial software for small business property management isn’t too expensive. Besides, with SOFT4RealEstate, you can expect to have the functionality that you need. By running the software on the cloud, you’ll be able to have unlimited ways to access it (via workspace or remotely). If updates or expansions are needed, they can be arranged quite quickly, thanks to the competent and professional IT devs.

Due to the fact that it is continuously updated and improved, as well as receives 365 days-a-year support, SOFT4RealEstate and most other software for commercial property management is definitely an investment with long-term value. You can keep historic data and generate reports, forecast and make predictions, improve pricing plans, find where to upsell and do much more in helping your property management business not lose customers or worse – allowing them to move to your competitors who swiped them right from under your nose.

It’s worth mentioning that the large amount of data you gather with the help of management software, helps you improve customer relations, so it’s also like a partial version of a CRM software.

How you can make the most of this tool?

Besides being able to make your business a much more lucrative partner for tenants and helping you retain their business during uncertain periods, commercial property management software is also capable of much more.

For example, it has different modules that you can utilize to improve your business from almost every angle. Like SOFT4RealEstate has a dedicated module that acts like its own separate bidding software for commercial cleaning services where you can just keep track of all maintenance tasks (like cleaning, which was used as an example) in the building. 

Depending on the exact choice of software, the very specifics of available tools and possible avenues to explore, can differ. But, in terms of general improvements for your business, management software can help you save hours of time almost on a weekly basis. It will improve relations with clients, help make your services more attractive and reduce the so called churn-rates of clients leaving unexpectedly.