Building on Success

Impact Management Group

By Mike Sederholm on Jul 16, 2020 in News

Impact Management Group, LLC has big plans for the future. The affordable housing property development and management company is set to expand its business strategy, and they have the experience, staff and investment in technology to help set themselves up for success.

The new venture for Impact is into the fee management service industry. By this effort, Impact will assume property management and affordable housing program compliance responsibilities for properties owned by other parties, in exchange for a management fee.

With the experience of managing approximately 1,400 affordable and market rate units across Wisconsin, Impact has a lot to offer clients. Their extensive industry knowledge not only boosts their credibility, but also serves as a valuable asset that potential clients can leverage to make their own affordable housing compliance programs more effective.

Impact’s strategy to begin offering management services is to first focus on prospective clients with HUD 50059 units and properties, and then expand into management of portfolios composed of larger numbers of units, including Low Income Housing Tax Credit properties. Compliance mandates for these programs vary, and Impact’s experience will go a long way in helping its clients reduce the complexity of qualifying residents, calculating rents, managing vacant units, reporting to funding sources and more.

A portion of Impact’s compliance expertise has been gained by support from RightSource. It’s expected that prospective clients will see how Impact works closely with RightSource and view the relationship as attractive in selecting a fee manager for their properties.

“We couldn’t be where we are today without RightSource,” said Lisa Barkelar, vice president of Impact Management.

RightSource, recently acquired by Yardi, offers compliance, consulting and training services, and specializes in serving clients of the affordable housing industry. All of RightSource’s software and services are now fully integrated into the Yardi Affordable Housing Suite, which eliminates excessive data entry, software logins, and transfer of data between standalone databases.

As a longtime RightSource client, Barkelar has firsthand knowledge of the workflow nuances associated with affordable housing compliance. The knowledge of those challenges allowed Barkelar to be strategic about deciding which compliance tasks to complete in-house and which to leave to RightSource staff. That flexibility did not lead to widespread organizational downsizing nor outsourcing completely to RightSource. Rather, the partnership with RightSource has freed Impact staff to complete higher-value tasks, while enjoying the benefit of reduced workloads and risks associated with compliance tasks.

“Even though we’ve contracted with RightSource for compliance services, we haven’t had to drastically reduce our staff. While our in-house compliance team is now comprised of a single liaison between our company and RightSource, we’ve found the opportunity to reallocate former compliance staff to higher value tasks that ultimately better serve our clients,” said Barkelar.

Impact also takes advantage of training content available through RightSource. Courses cover workflows designed to make compliance tasks faster and easier, and at less risk of errors. “The courses are a great way to resolve performance issues and get new hires quickly up to speed,” said Barkelar.

Audits are also easier. According to Barkelar, they’ve all but eliminated on-site monitoring visits from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Instead, HUD can access compliance files with secure, read-only access set up by RightSource. With that access, HUD can work through applicant and resident files to document compliance with the guidelines of federal housing policies.

Are you in the market for the services of an experienced affordable housing management company? Learn more about Impact by visiting ImpactManagement.org. You can also visit Yardi’s website to read how RightSource reduces the cost and complexity of compliance, making it easier for our clients to create new affordable housing opportunities across the country.