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More packages arrive each day at apartment communities, overflowing lockers and storage facilities and making a mess of common areas. Unfortunately, residents feel that urgency first-hand in the form of daily calls, texts, emails and resident portal reminders to pick up their packages.
Packages are inundating apartment communities across the country every day and buildings are even more prone to drowning in deliveries as the holiday gift mayhem unfolds. So what can property managers do to survive the deluge of packages hitting their communities?
From parking to patios, storage to poolside seating, space is finite at multifamily properties. Because square footage is directly linked to revenue at apartment communities, it is critical to leverage each inch of real estate and maximize the return on investment (ROI).
One area of operations where property managers are turning to fee-based solutions is package management. The benefits for operators are clear. Third-party package services offer off-site package storage and eliminate the burden and liability of package management from onsite teams.
Office teams have served as the intermediaries between delivery services and residents, receiving packages on behalf of residents, submitting arrival notifications, and facilitating distribution. It was a time-consuming job, but the emergence of e-commerce has turned the task into a liability.
The stories of the week: hidden budget items that put you in the red, helping associates grow before they quit, secure package management and resident satisfaction, CRE's stimulus wish, recession-resilient Class B multifamily and apartment home size increases in pandemic.
As we move into 2021, the baseline delivery volume is projected to remain 30% higher, rendering traditional package management infrastructure ineffective. A solution with the ability to scale alongside the increasing number of deliveries is a requirement moving forward in the multifamily space.
There are a number of differentiators in multifamily that owners and property managers lean on to promote their properties. Location, amenities, technology, services and square footage all come at a premium. But with all else being equal, the tipping point is customer service.