WinnResidential

Award-winning Management

By Erica Rascón on Oct 9, 2014 in People

Unstable growth and slashed funding in affordable housing would suggest that the sector is no longer a lucrative investment. But demand soars higher and countless companies are showcasing just how rewarding affordable housing can be.

Yardi client WinnResidential, the property management arm of WinnCompanies, reigns as the nation’s largest affordable multifamily property management company as ranked by the National Affordable Housing Management Association (NAHMA). WinnResidential is also the nation’s sixth largest residential property management firm overall. In the right hands, affordable housing can be an asset to any growing portfolio.

In his 20 years with WinnCompanies, Senior Vice President Brian Kean has witnessed the company’s growth despite major cuts in federal and local funding for affordable housing. With outside resources limited, WinnCompanies has to focus on other factors to ensure continued growth. The company’s large scale success with affordable housing development and management comes in part by responding to what consumers want:  affordable rents, sustainability, and stellar customer service.

To keep development costs low, WinnCompanies often seeks to renovate existing apartment complexes rather than pursue new construction. This approach reduces the amount of costly building materials needed while increasing the availability of quality affordable housing.

WinnCompanies works hard to make operations as efficient as possible given limited resources. From a corporate level to onsite staff, the company operates on Yardi Voyager Affordable Housing in conjunction Yardi Budgeting and Forecasting to promote efficiency and accuracy. The software requires fewer employees to get involved in the paper shuffle.

“Budgeting has been helpful because previously we were doing it offline on a large linked spreadsheet, which worked fairly well but we had to take the budgets and manually load them into Yardi. It was quite inefficient,” explains Kean.  “In this way, if there are any last minute revisions, it all just feeds directly from the Yardi budget module right into Yardi financial statements. It saves a lot of time and effort.”

The Budgeting and Forecasting browser-based software also improves workflows. “Another benefit to the budget module is that a lot of it can be done corporately. For instance, our IT department, accounting department, and marketing department can put in standard cross parameters into Yardi so that the sites can just go in. Either they will feed directly, automatically, into the budget module or you’ll be given selections, then the budget populates instead of having to go in every year and re-enter a whole bunch of information to the Excel spreadsheet,” says Kean. “We can also do it with payroll. So it makes sure that the right expense numbers and the right income numbers are in our budgets and there is less opportunity for user error.” Fewer overhead expenses and costly errors save money at a corporate level, allowing WinnCompanies to pass those savings on to renters.

In addition to preserving architecturally important structures, historic renovations can tap into sustainability initiatives that renters crave and provide greatly needed housing. Loft Five50, for example, is the recipient of the 2014 NAHMA Vanguard Award for Major Rehab of a Historic Structure. The former 90,000 square foot textile mill has been converted into 75 one- and two-bedroom lofts.  The project earned LEED certification for its environmentally friendly features such as commuter rail access, proximity to local parks, on-site recycling, eco-friendly flooring and Energy Star appliances. Such green features help families save money on utilities and transportation while improving renters’ wellness.

With Winn’s conservative approach to development and management, and the right software, WinnCompanies demonstrates that affordable housing is still a worthy investment that is capable of healthy returns, national praise and accolades. To learn more about the company’s award-winning services, visit winnnco.com.