Renters Insurance Required

A Best Practice at Legacy Partners

By Leah Etling on Jan 11, 2016 in People

At Foster City, Calif. based Legacy Partners, renter’s insurance is a requirement at all multifamily properties. The company has a 15,000 unit portfolio, which includes both conventional and affordable housing product.

“We have 100 percent of our residents insured. That way we can reserve our big time liability policy for the big stuff. The little stuff can be handled through either the master policy or the resident’s individual policies,” explains Lisa Dixon, Residential Help Desk Director.

To offer residents a quick, easy, and affordable insurance policy option, Legacy Partners chose to use Yardi’s Resident Shield renters insurance product.

With full integration into Yardi’s RentCafe offering, Resident Shield is one of the most convenient and reliable renters insurance offerings on the market today.

“Because we’ve implemented this at the same time as RentCafe, with the online lease execution residents cannot execute a lease unless they have a current policy. It’s very easy, convenient, and competitively priced for them to choose Resident Shield,” Dixon said.

Handling individual policies for Legacy Partners’ mixed-portfolio and affordable properties is slightly more complicated, as affordable housing typically cannot require residents to provide insurance.

“We’ve been able to work with the team and have different unit types designated, so our leasing managers can program the correct settings. The affordable units either have a requirement for an individual policy – but we absorb the cost – or we sign them up on the master policy, at our expense,” Dixon explained.

Multifamily residents are offered the opportunity to select any insurance provider they wish, but it saves Dixon’s staff time when they choose the Resident Shield policy and information is populated directly into the Voyager 7S database.

“A lot of people do get to that point in the application process and go ‘Oh, I don’t have that, OK. I can sign up right here. And it’s a minimal amount of money.’ You click a box, it takes you through the form, and you sign up in just seconds.”

Legacy Partners became a Yardi client in 2005, and in 2010, the company felt that it had matured its Yardi platform to the point where it became an asset in earning fee-managed business.

“We present the suite of products that we use, and explain why they are valuable to our clients,” Dixon explained. “You’re hiring us because we know what we’re doing.

Initially, everybody looked at the platform as just an accounting package when we first choose Yardi. But it really isn’t that at all. There’s so much you can get out of it,” Dixon continued.

In addition to the Yardi Voyager Residential suite, RENTCafé, and Resident Shield, Legacy Partners uses Yardi Investment Management, eLearning, and is rolling out the Walk-In Payment System (WIPS) to eliminate money orders from the rent payment process. Twenty-four of the company’s properties are using WIPS.

“This gives residents a mechanism where they don’t have to go buy a money order, bring it back to the office and make sure it’s on time. They can make the payment in cash at one of the retail locations. We’ve had pretty good luck with the availability of payment locations around our communities in Northern and Southern California,” Dixon said. After the resident makes the payment, electronic confirmation is available in Voyager next day.

Solutions to common property management problems are one of the things that clients appreciate about Yardi’s approach to product development.

“Nothing that we do at Legacy is unique, necessarily, in the industry. It’s nice to see these extra things built in and recognize that you are listening to your clients and hey, if one client wants it, chances are that other clients are going to benefit from it. Giving us that voice is really great,” Dixon said.

Learn more about Legacy Partners: http://legacypartners.com/

Learn more about Yardi: http://www.yardi.com/