How Smart Property Operations are changing Multifamily: An OPTECH Overview

Written by Brad Davis | Nov 21, 2019 1:18:36 AM

Last week, multifamily owners, developers and investors came together for the NMHC's annual technology conference, OPTECH. OPTECH is the premier technology conference for the multifamily industry. And this year NMHC hit the mark yet again.

Smart Property Operations

This year, attendees experienced a new conference format with the introduction of "Pitch Presentations". These presentations consisted of a quick four minute pitch and Q&A given by emerging and established technology companies tackling some of the multifamily's biggest challenges.

Dwelo took part in the pitch presentations to showcase how smart technology is disrupting the multifamily industry through "Smart Property Operations". Mike Rovito, Dwelo's CEO, took the stage to explain the time and cost savings multifamily operations can expect by taking a smart property operations mentality.

Here is the pitch.

Usually when you hear about smart apartments, what's being talked about is the benefits for residents. How it differentiates your property, how it helps you market, and raises rents. But today I want to pitch you on the concept of smart property operations. And to help convince you that this is something worthwhile, I'm going to use three statistics:

47%
$12,000
200 Hours

1) 47%

This is the amount of energy savings you can anticipate to have in vacant units from smart property operations. We did an analysis with Conservice on tens of thousands of units worth of vacant energy data. We saw a few things. First vacant units use more energy than occupied units. The reason this is happening is because there are periods where nobody's in the vacant unit and massive amounts of waste are going on. And in some of those units a lot is being wasted. The top 5% of vacant units are using seven times as much energy as the median vacant unit was. With smart thermostats and smart light switches, you can control that. You can drive that energy use back in line by having everything turned off, the way you want it every single day regardless of whether the painter went in there turning everything on and left it on. So forty seven percent energy savings translates to about $38 per unit per month for vacant units.

2) $12,000

$12,000 is the average cost of a water incident at a community, some sort of leak. These incidences happen about four times per year at the average

community. That can range from slow leak behind a wall causing mold -- all the

way up to the catastrophic failure of the water heater. Those leaks can be mitigated, with smart sensors and smart water meters. Those devices give you data on what's happening

at the pipe or in strategic locations throughout that unit so that you can see when things are going wrong and intervene more quickly to reduce that cost of those incidents.

3) 200 hours

The last statistic is 200 hours. That's the the amount of time that managers are

self reporting they are saving from smart access. The communities that already have Dwelo, these managers are telling us that over the course of the year they're saving 200 hours. Thats five man weeks of time from not having to deal with keys, walking back and forth to KeyTrac machines, or handing off keys. Smart locks are enabling them to save five man weeks of time per year and reinvest that in value-added activities across the property.

47%, $12,000, and 200 hours. Those are the types of statistics you can expect to see by implementing smart technology at your community and running your community with smart property operations.

Want to see your community can be impacted by implementing smart property operations? Get in touch here.

View full post