Professional Equity Management makes online rental payments the center of their strategy

Professional Equity Management (PEM) oversees approximately 7,000 multifamily units throughout the US and have been a Zego customer since 2014. With the industry average of online rental payments hovering around 30%, PEM’s exceptional digital rent payment adoption of 45% across their properties caught our eye. We sat down with Scott Hines, VP Of Technology and Revenue at PEM, to gain insight into their 2020 goals & strategies and why they chose to focus on online rental payments.

Scott revealed that improving their digital payment adoption wasn’t a massive undertaking but it did require investments in technology, training and marketing. For example, they look at quarterly reports to track utilization and send monthly email blasts to their residents reminding them to pay online. Their onsite managers even run their own mini campaigns to boost online rental payments. Their whole team has embraced the culture of promoting online rental payments and it’s catapulting their business forward. Watch the video and learn more about how Scott and his team are propelling their business forward by prioritizing online rental payments.

Video Transcription

“PEM Real Estate Group is a conventional multifamily company, we own and operate as well as fee manage for our clients. And I would say right now we’re at about 7,000 units across the nation. We have been a PayLease client now for I want to say about 5 to 6 years. For me, when I look at a company to partner with, not only am I looking at the product, but I’m looking at the people and the culture – honesty, transparency. And PayLease was a great decision. One of the reasons we stuck with PayLease for so long is, I can tell they’re always looking at – how can we make this better.

Right now I think we’re averaging about 45% utilization across our properties. And to be honest, we really do track it. We look at every quarter. Our client success team will give me a report that shows what our utilization percentages are for each property. We look at any areas maybe where we can improve. The marketing team offers, you know, campaigns to email blast our residents. So that’s something we do anytime we pick up a new property. Monthly blasts, just letting the residents know – listen, you don’t have to pay online, but it’s a very reasonable, easy, cheap option to pay your rent. Really I feel like we haven’t even had to put a ton of effort in, and maybe that’s just because we’ve embraced it. PayLease, ourselves, our team members have really embraced that culture. So it’s really been a very smooth, seamless process.

Really for the residents and the site teams, they don’t have to do a lot of logging in, our residents log right into a portal, PayLease just, you know, silently takes their payments. It’s super easy, very smooth. We have property managers who will run their own mini campaigns. Say, you know if you pay online, we’ll put your name into a hat and then you can get a coffee on us or a lunch. So we get a lot of team effort to ensure that we can get the best utilization possible.

The PayLease customer support team is absolutely fantastic, they’re very transparent. If there is ever an issue, the engineering team is right on it, and they rarely make a mistake a second time. The client success teams – their response is amazing. I literally have nothing bad to say.

Definitely excited to see the whole concept of a one-stop-shop. I mean, whenever I’m looking at technology or products, the last thing we want to do is have 15 different systems, 15 different logins. One app to rule them all is never a bad thing. That allows a resident to get in and get that full experience on their side. And then from our side, to be able to communicate to handle the resident, work with them, you know, package notifications, all these little amenities that really build up into a big experience. Because there’s really never one big reason why people stay at your communities. It’s a lot of the small ones. It’s the little things that really build up into making them feel that this is their home and they don’t want to leave.

So it’s very exciting to see PayLease, who already in our eyes is a high performer, reputable company, it’s very exciting to see what they’re bringing in so we can bring more products under that PayLease wheelhouse. And it’s a partnership that I foresee for a long time coming. I love PayLease.”