American Landmark Streamlines Apartment Maintenance with Mobile Tech, Slashing Time and Increasing Asset Value

Like most successful multifamily companies, American Landmark keeps a constant eye on efficient cost and labor-saving operations. Focusing on distressed multifamily properties and renovation opportunities, the company seeks to add value not only through improvements, but also by tuning up the properties’ operations and NOI to increase their asset value in anticipation of selling them, usually in a window of three to five years. One of the most exciting developments in the company’s pursuit of operational excellence has been in the critical area of apartment maintenance – not only a significant money and time sink in multifamily, but also at the top of the list of items that impact resident satisfaction. Keeping apartment maintenance techs on the move American Landmark’s adoption of RealPage’s Mobile Facilities has utterly transformed the traditional leaky, paperwork-heavy maintenance process into a watertight, streamlined model of efficiency. “Most multifamily properties still do maintenance the old-fashioned way,” says Chris Keef, the company’s systems analyst. “Maintenance staff go to the front office to learn about their assignments. They might spend a few minutes there talking to leasing staff and sipping coffee. There’s paperwork, and it might or might not be ready. Then they go to the unit to do the work. Then more paperwork. Then back to the office. In the era of mobile devices, this makes no sense anymore.” With Mobile Facilities in place, all the information and reporting the apartment maintenance techs need is on their mobile devices. They move from one job to the next without having to visit the front office, logging job status as they go. Supervisors and the front office can make changes in instructions on the fly. And everything’s integrated with the property management software, so front office staff aren’t spending their time creating maintenance paperwork and updating...