INDUSTRY FOCUS
. . .
The sluggish economy and continued inflationary pressures are taking their toll on the property market
in general. According to credit bureau TPN’s latest report, the last three years have seen a steady
decline in demand for residential properties, with a concomitant increase in the supply of properties.
What’s more, the bureau says vacancy rates remain consistently high at 8.64% with escalations at just
4.85%. Most worrying for estate and property managers is that tenant good standing numbers continue
to decline, with a current level of 81.8%.
Effective utility management
guides estate managers through
ROUGH
ECONOMIC
SEAS
KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON
Given
the
current
environment,
property
managers
are
under
increasing pressure to minimise tenant churn. Keeping residents happy
while ensuring that they efficiently manage the rental collection is, in
itself, a full-time job. Recovering and managing utilities on top of this
is causing significant stress for most managers and bodies corporate.
Most municipalities are moving towards bulk electricity supply to
estates and complexes. This means they will lay down one meter to
the estate and, thereafter, the body corporate or estate manager has
to monitor and pay the bill for the whole estate’s consumption.
This leaves managers, tenants and bodies corporate with a very
limited set of options. They can agree to split the utilities bills pro rata,
which encourages overuse, and inevitably leads to conflict; or they
can install their own kwH meters and read them every month, which is
administratively costly, and also leads to disputes if tenants don’t trust
the readings. But there is a better option.
CITIQ PREPAID OFFERS A NEW WAY OF MANAGING
UTILITIES
The prepaid sub-metering option is vastly superior to trying to manage
a post-paid offering with manual meter readings, working out shared
services, and then invoicing units. Not only will each unit have its own,
independently measured meter, but Citiq Prepaid will collect the money
from each unit and, once its fees have been deducted, the money will be
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INDUSTRY JOURNAL