Property fund management, by its very nature, is a complicated undertaking. Fund managers can avoid the more egregious pitfalls of the business by following a few ground rules, according to Terry Gowan, regional director of Australia and New Zealand sales for Yardi®. “With a little planning, you can save staff time, ensure data reliability, meet compliance requirements, satisfy investors and tenants.  And making effective use of technology that delivers real-time visibility into investors, funds, investments, properties, opportunities and clients is another good strategy,” says Gowan, who works closely with almost half of Australia’s top performing real estate investment trusts and presents at property fund management industry events. Here are Terry’s top tips for successful fund management: Invest in an industry-specific system. “Get your fundamental accounting, processes and procedures correct from the start.  Custom-made software systems are never cheaper than off-the-shelf systems designed for your industry.  Use what the most successful of your peers are using and duplicate it with a provider that can stand the test of time.” Don’t go cheap. “Make sure the system you choose can deal with intercompany transactions, fees, ownership structures, foreign exchange, and properties.  Avoid low-end options that aren’t efficient for these and other aspects of property and real estate investment management.” Establish an audit trail for financials. “Capturing low-level transactional data that reconciles every month is crucial to being auditable for compliance purposes.” Put everything into your database that you possibly can, while limiting disparate systems. “When the central source of truth for your data resides in a single database, you’ll have visibility from the fund through to the tenant, any time you need it.  This approach avoids the manual labor and potential data loss associated with using interfaces and/or data warehouses or multiple custom reports to piece...

In 2004, Yardi opened its doors in Glen Head, Oyster Bay, New York as part of the BJ Murray acquisition. The team of 16 employees set out to define a course for the fledgling office. “We faced the challenge of merging functionality, converting client platforms and creating a shared culture,” recalls Richard Malpica, Vice President and General Manager, Eastern US, Sales at Yardi. “I don’t know if there was an official strategy for [merging cultures]. I think we made it clear, from a Yardi perspective, that the company was committed to integrating the group and growing together,” says Malpica. “It was really a matter of understanding people’s skills and desires and plugging them into our framework. They can create a new trajectory for a long-term career with the company.” Over a span of several years, the New York office steadily found its way. Employees discovered new applications for their talents and practical ways of supporting one another along the journey. In addition to merging corporate cultures, Yardi found itself adapting to the New York culture. The market proved to be rich with opportunity but difficult to conquer. The Yardi team strived to form relationships in a market where loyalties are strong and tough to penetrate. “New York clients are the most demanding but they’re also extremely loyal. Once you get through the difficulties, the relationships are very, very strong,” Malpica says. John Caputo agrees. The Senior Server Administrator at Yardi has worked in New York since 1996. In his experience, brand loyalties have always been a challenge for growing companies in the metropolitan area. “[New York companies] have strong connections to our clients. It’s true of Yardi and other companies around here because it is such a competitive workplace. They really have a fierce...

Each month, Yardi hosts the critically acclaimed Yardi eLearning ® User Forum. These interactive webinars give users valuable insights into product functionality, updates, and troubleshooting. Engaging. Practical. Smart. Each webinar focuses on topics selected by Yardi users, guaranteeing insights that are relevant and practical.  Sample Webinar Topics Include: Drive Student Focus to Training that Matters How to Partner with Your Yardi Voyager Account Manager Make a Great First Impression & Keep It Fresh All Year eLearning Fair Housing Release and Focus Group Hot to Get Management in Your Training Program Facilitators model User Forums after realistic conversations with clients. Co-hosts role-play as tech support specialists and clients. This arrangement creates a fun and informative atmosphere for attendees. Amy McKelvy, Software Implementation Coordinator at Holland Partner Group, attended her first User Forum this year. “The forum I attended was at the end of the second day, so the atmosphere was upbeat and exciting,” she begins. “Forums can be hit or miss, I’ve learned, and some clients use the forum to air grievances, but this one was not that at all. I think Patty [Evans] set the right tone at the start, and led to a very successful sharing time.” Sharing is one key to eLearning User Forum success. Rather than simply lecturing on these topics, facilitators showcase examples from Yardi clients’ eLearning Universities to illustrate each idea. Attendees receive real-life strategies from peers. This client-to-client interaction fosters a sense of community and networking among the Yardi eLearning training community. “I love to provide help and ideas as well as feedback to the eLearning team and other clients. The forum is a perfect opportunity to not only give help, but get other ideas as well,” says McKelvy. Solutions for the Real World In each meeting, facilitators...

Aditya Shah, director of Middle East operations at Yardi, writes on the rise of Cloud-based technology in FM activities. Tenants and residents within both, the com­mercial and residen­tial real estate sectors continue to have ris­ing expectations for technology – most notably about how it will impact service levels and enhance their cus­tomer experience and occupancy. From a management perspective, a com­petitive environment breeds the need for fast­er customer-focused services that are highly efficient to streamline operations and reduce costs, while also improving overall returns. While technology has played a role in the field of FM for a number of years, the advent of the smart apps and an ever-increasing drive towards mobility has seen some seriously sig­nificant developments – ones that offer this particular section of the real estate industry much more than just improved productivity. The Cloud is here – it has been for some time – and more and more businesses are adopting cloud-based solutions as the cor­nerstone to enhance numerous aspects of their operations. Mobility undoubtedly of­fers managers a far greater level of flexibility than ever thought before, and with all these technologies working in synergy, a facili­ties manager is now no longer reactive, but can manage their day-to-day operations for properties, entire portfolios, and tenants and residents with proactive foresight. The solutions that are born out of this ever-evolving environment can boost cus­tomer loyalty by improving speed of re­sponse, driving down the cost of processes and procedures, and delivering a degree of flexibility and scalability to suit a wide range of business models. While adoption was previously slow, the sector is embracing these opportunities. Managers and engineers can engage in workflows that improve productivity and time management – be that for scheduling preventative maintenance, allocating prox­imity-related tasks, recording evidence, or...

Advances in technology are giving the retail property sector a helping hand to define compelling offerings through the use of big data. Developing financially successful retail centres is challenging. In fact, it’s widely regarded that real estate companies, invested in retail assets, are among the leading pioneers of strategic real estate management. Successful strategies are born out of understanding the best approach to engage shoppers with the right tenant mix to suit regional trends as demographics change and are impacted by regional economic, cultural and political circumstances. Adapting a retail offering and providing new ways of engaging retailers and consumers while delivering services that enhance relationships, drive down costs and deliver value for owners are undoubtedly key. However, at the very heart of any successful strategy is one, mission-critical element – data. With the retail sector generating more data in a single month than many other vertical real estate markets, the use of simple tools and spreadsheets is redundant as firms struggle to gain valuable insights into retail operations and trends. Business technology is undoubtedly a major driver. Helping provide a solid, error-free foundation to house data is one thing, but the power comes from delivering a seamless, real-time framework that enables employees to analyse the data in such a way to deliver sound retail strategies. In an industry that is so invested in defining compelling offerings through the use of data, has the technology sector risen to the challenge? The most successful retail real estate companies are now embracing the latest technology to support their strategies and the leading software providers are raising the bar. Cloud-based offerings now enable companies to host their data in a single secure database, providing a risk-free environment that delivers real-time access to strategy-shaping analysis to desktops and...

For many consumers, the credit reporting industry is key to achieving important milestones — including buying a car, getting a job, and leasing a home. And when it comes to renting an apartment, property managers typically prefer applicants with a record of paying rent on time (even if they’ve made a few late payments on their credit card bills). But what about new renters or renters who are looking to build or rebuild their credit history? Thanks to a new collaboration between Yardi and Experian RentBureau, rent payments can now be used to build credit history. Yardi has worked with Experian RentBureau to launch an interface that helps renters build credit history by having their rental payments reported to Experian RentBureau. “We are on a mission to broaden opportunities for consumers to gain access to the credit marketplace,” said Emily Christiansen, director of Experian RentBureau. “By working with Yardi, we are significantly expanding the number of consumers who can benefit from having their rental payments reported, which can make a real impact in the daily lives of renters nationwide.” In addition to the benefits for consumers, property managers who furnish rental payment history data to Experian RentBureau gain enhanced protection from lease skips, a faster debt-recovery process and more residents paying rent in a timely manner. Yardi clients simply sign up with Experian RentBureau to have their rental payment history data reported automatically from Yardi Voyager®. “We are dedicated to continually improving our platforms and services to further meet the evolving needs of our clients,” said Patrick Hennessey, vice president and general manager of Resident Screening at Yardi. “Adding the capability to report valuable rental payment data to Experian RentBureau through a seamless process will help our clients manage their portfolios more efficiently and enhance...

Note: the following piece by Richard Gerritsen, Regional Director for Yardi European sales, was originally published in Property Week of Great Britain in June 2016. Reprinted with permission. It seems that almost anything is available to us now at the click of a mouse – or more often a tap on the screen of our phone. What is the population of Botswana? How do I get to my next meeting? Does the restaurant that I want to go to take bookings? Does it have good reviews? And where is best for a drink afterwards? It has become commonplace now to have all these questions answered almost instantly via mobile technology to the extent we now take it for granted. I may be showing my age, but I can remember a time when I used a physical map to find my way around; my daughter has never used one and wouldn’t know what to do with it. That makes me feel very old, but we must remember that this generation – which has grown up in a world that is contantly connected, where everything, it sometimes seems, has an app – is the one that is about to take over. Is the business world in general – and the property sector in particular – ready for this sea change? I’m not sure it is. Yes, there is innovation and a burgeoning proptech sector, but overwhelmingly the world of property remains firmly rooted in the old ways of doing things. If I want to buy a book or tickets to the theatre, all the information I need is just a few clicks away. Paper chase But if I’m an investor and I want to buy a £100m building, it is hard to get the information I...

Where does real estate technology go from here? The answer lies in the development pipelines of innovative companies like Yardi, but the journey so far has been inspiring. A thought leadership video presented at the recent Realcomm/IBcon Conference includes clips from tech pioneers like Steve Jobs (Apple), Larry Ellison (Oracle) and Larry Page (Google), as well as real estate leaders like Andrew Florance (CoStar) and Lew Horne (CBRE). Bridging the two industries is none other than Anant Yardi, CEO and Founder of Yardi Systems, who offers perspective on the app-based economy that has become the modern norm. “Let me suggest two things that have really taken all of us by surprise: Uber and Airbnb,” Yardi says. “Both of them are interesting because of the technology and what they bring to all of us is quite unique. But the transactions and the functions that they perform are commonplace – a way to get from A to B and a way to rent a room. The question that we puzzle over is this: Does this apply to the real estate industry? And, what message should we be taking away from these companies?” Watch the video here – and prepare to be inspired about technology and real...

LONDON – Industrial property has emerged as one of the strongest performing asset classes this year, apparently brushing off the threat of Brexit as consumers shop – or rather, click – until they drop. The rise of e-commerce means tenant demand is robust, with record rents being achieved in tightly-constrained urban areas where logistics space is competing with residential. However, occupiers are having to invest heavily in technology. In a continuing series of think tanks, Yardi brought together a panel of experts to discuss these issues in the European real estate market. Panelists: Claer Barrett, Financial Times – Chair Alan Holland, Business Unit Director, Greater London – Segro Richard Croft, Chief Executive – M7 Real Estate Mark Bowden, Partner – Caisson Investment Management Michael Williams, Investment Manager – M&G Real Estate Kevin Mofid, Research Director – Savills CB: The good news is that we’re seeing healthy yields and rental growth on industrial space, particularly in the Greater London area – but is this mainly because so much of it has vanished in the past decade? AH: The pressure on land for industrial and urban logistics is immense, particularly in areas of population concentration where developers like Segro are competing with house builders. According to the GLA, around 700 ha of industrial land has been lost in Greater London as places like Nine Elms, Old Oak Common and the Olympic Park ha ve become residential areas. That’s the equivalent of seven times the size of Regent’s Park – it’s gone and it won’t be replaced. KM: Since 2009, Savills research shows the supply of existing warehousing stock has decreased by 70 per cent. But at the same time, take-up has risen from a long-running average of 18m sq ft per year to 22m sq ft in the...

The Yardi team traveled from all corners to attend the annual National Apartment Association (NAA) Education Conference and Exposition in San Francisco last week. More than 9,200 apartment industry professionals joined us for one of the biggest shows of the year. We participated in educational sessions, scoped out new trends, and had a blast meeting with clients and colleagues in the multifamily space. 7 Things We Learned at the 2016 NAA Education Conference and Expo Googlers Have It Good On Wednesday, our friends at Google took us (and some lucky clients) on a tour of the Googleplex in Mountain View. Between the campus bikes, nap pods, and friendly sculptures, their corporate culture is every bit as fantastic as we expected. Michael Strahan Wants to Be the Male Oprah He said so himself! NFL Hall of Famer Michael Strahan was the keynote speaker on Thursday. He discussed motivation, overcoming obstacles, and maximizing your career. He also talked real estate. “I love real estate. It’s a passion of mine. I am a big fan of real estate fixer-uppers. I’m good at demo. If you can’t hit a quarterback, hit a wall,” he joked. Strahan shared that it’s particularly important to him to acknowledge and thank everyone he works with – whether it’s a producer, make-up artist, or the custodial staff – noting that “everyone makes the ship run.” We couldn’t agree more. 3. ENERGY STAR Ratings Aren’t Just for Appliances It turns out that buildings can have ENERGY STAR ratings, too. On a panel moderated by Yardi’s Gene Cattani, Michael Zatz, manager for ENERGY STAR Commercial Buildings at U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), desc ribed how the EPA recently launched an aggressive multifamily energy scoring system. ENERGY STAR now has more than 30,000 multifamily properties using...

A longtime Yardi executive was honored Thursday night as part of the 22nd annual South Coast Business & Technology Awards. Started in 1995 by local business and industry leaders, the awards honor individuals and companies who have demonstrated extraordinary commitment to ensuring the economic vitality of the South Coast of Santa Barbara County. Gordon Morrell, Yardi’s Executive Vice President and a Yardi employee since 1990, was named Executive of the Year by the selection committee. “I’m honored to receive this award, but it really is not for me,” Morrell said. “It is for the entire global team at Yardi. The reason for our success is the exceptional collaboration of everyone at the company, rather than the efforts of one individual.” Morrell oversees Yardi’s corporate and fiscal interests, including corporate acquisitions and day-to-day operations. He joined the company when it had just one Santa Barbara office and 25 employees. Today, there are 4,800 Yardi employees at 35 offices around the world. The South Coast Business & Technology Awards are sponsored by more than 80 local companies.  The proceeds raised benefit the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara, and are awarded to business and technology students at Santa Barbara City College, UC Santa Barbara, and Westmont College. Other 2016 SCB&T honorees include: Old Spanish Days in Santa Barbara, Excellence in Service; Sandra Hirsh, Isolite Systems, Entrepreneur of the Year; Lynda.com a LinkedIn Company, Company of the Year; and George Powell, Pioneer Award. Read more about Morrell, who plays a major role in Yardi’s charitable giving efforts,  in an interview with UCSB’s GradPost. Watch an entertaining clip of Morrell accepting the award – with his guitar – at the link below. Footage courtesy @SB Scholarship Foundation Twitter feed. Gordon Morrell of @Yardi jams his way through his acceptance speech...

In a speech focused on goals and giving back, Yardi CEO and founder Anant Yardi addressed the 1300 attendees of the 2016 Spring Yardi Advanced Solutions Conference in Washington, DC on Wednesday morning. Speaking to the clients across a variety of real estate verticals, Mr. Yardi talked about the company’s focus for the future: app-based technology that will enhance ease of use and push real estate software toward a model similar to Uber and Airbnb. “Our focus from here onwards will be mobile apps,” Mr. Yardi said. He demonstrated how apps already play a significant role for Yardi multifamily clients. Renters using the RentCafe Resident app have submitted thousands of work orders, which are processed using Yardi Maintenance mobile apps for property and maintenance managers. Additional apps for leasing, facilities management, and electronic health care record-keeping are already in use by Yardi clients. Mr. Yardi forecast that in the near future, apps will allow users to quickly and easily interface with their cloud-based Voyager platforms. 95 percent of Yardi clients are now cloud-hosted, he said. “That’s one of our goals – just one segment of our next pentathlon,” Mr. Yardi said. The general session opened with a video showcasing the marketing genius of pentathlete Mia Wentworth, Director of Marketing and Training at Monarch Investment and Management. Her focus on creating a “culture of achievement” at her company inspired Yardi’s remarks on bringing value to clients and breaking new ground. For the first time, Mr. Yardi also publicly acknowledged the company’s efforts to give back to the communities where the company has offices via corporate philanthropy and service. “In the past, we haven’t talked about it,” he said. “The thought was that if you talk about your giving, somehow it diminishes the essence of what...

Many commercial property managers seek to abbreviate the leasing process, expedite reporting, and improve overall efficiency and accuracy. Unfortunately, it is a struggle to compile and interpret data from multiple software programs within their organizations. Robert Teel, Senior VP G&A at Yardi, and his team are redefining the way that user groups interact through software. As a former financial accounting systems consultant, Teel is familiar with the challenges that property managers and analysts face when their software is not fully integrated: long process lifecycles and crippling inefficiencies. “With a single stack, you can shorten nearly every business process lifecycle. In essence, our vision is that our clients can create an ecoysytem on the single stack to connect their front office with back office, and even extend participation to external users,” says Teel. Deloitte Consulting LLP reports that single stack solutions are the new standard for cloud, digital, and analytics. Projects can experience gains through “faster environment readiness, the ability to engineer advanced scalability, and the elimination of power/connectivity constraints.” A single stack solution can remove limitations and promote intelligent growth. Teel observes that self-contained ecosystems allow users to minimize redundancies, capitalize upon a more efficient use of resources, and create consistent and accurate processes that add value to users. For example, Yardi client Prologis (a $20B US REIT with over 4,000 properties) has reduced their quarterly property reforecasting process by months.  “We went from a six-month quarterly forecast process to an eight-week process, and our accuracy is vastly improved,” according to Arthur Nelson, Vice President of Global Business Systems, Prologis. Such results are possible due to the single stack’s ability to track a process from start to finish, offering automated operations and consistent reporting. Teel offers the leasing process as an example, “The prospect—a...

A host of marketing geniuses recently descended on Nashville, Tennessee for the first Yardi Marketing Forum of 2016. This bi-annual event for Yardi Marketing Solutions clients combines learning, networking, and fun for an unforgettable three-days. Take a look at some of the highlights from our time in Nashville: Google‘s Presentation We always look forward to sessions led by guest presenters, and this forum was no exception. As an official Google Partner, we were pleased to invite Ben Killmer (pictured, left)– our favorite Googler – onstage Tuesday to discuss the ever-changing world of mobile search. Ben shared actionable tips to help properties get found by apartment hunters. He also taught the audience easy ways to create a better user experience that converts prospects into residents. “There are four essential strategies that can help you win consumers during micro-moments,” said Ben. “You’ve got to be there, be useful, be quick, and connect the dots.” And here’s a fun fact he passed on to us: did you know that 15% of all Google searches are completely unique and have never been searched before? Ben will be taking us on a tour of the Googleplex office in Mountain View this June, and we’re all quite excited about it. We promise to follow up with another blog post detailing who we met and what we ate for lunch in the Google cafeteria! A Night at the Opry After a full-day of guest speakers and learning labs on Tuesday, our group bussed out the legendary Grand Ole Opry concert venue for a catered dinner, wonderful ensemble show, and private back-stage tour. We were thrilled to take photos on stage where so many stars have performed – including Dolly Parton and Randy Travis – and got to peek inside dressing rooms...

With its mild weather and low-cost housing, Florida has held the crown for top retirement destination for decades. However, what once intrigued and lured senior citizens to Gulf Coast condominiums and South Beach high rises no longer carries sway. A new era of retirees are changing the notion of “ideal retirement location.” The king has been deposed, and though Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach still maintains some allure, the top spots now include more than a few unlikely candidates. A Different Kind of Retiree SmartAsset recently set out to discover what U.S. cities were best for active retirement. What they found was a shift away from quiet, sedentary twilight years. Instead, today’s seniors want stronger community connections, friendly tax policies, and all the amenities associated with an active lifestyle. With boomers poised to dominate all facets of senior living over the next several decades, the cliché of aimless retirees splitting time between golf and bingo has changed. As a reflection of this shift, SmartAsset chose to study the nation’s top cities based on this new set of metrics. What they found upends some of the most basic assumptions about what makes a perfect golden years retreat. The Active Lifestyle SmartAsset considered four metrics for their study: average effective tax rate, the number of doctors per 1000 residents, the number of retirement centers per 1000 inhabitants, and percentage of population made up by senior citizens. When assessing a city’s active lifestyle compatibility, SmartAsset determined the area’s Walk Score, which measures pedestrian navigability, safety and convenience. They also took into account the number of golf courses per 100,000 residents (some standards still apply!). Another key data point measured the number of other fitness-related businesses, like gyms, recreations centers and sporting goods stores, in the area. Once...

U.S. News & World Report recently analyzed 100 of the most populous metropolitan areas to identify the best places to live. Of the results, seven of the top ten U.S. cities are home to Yardi offices. To create the list, analysts compiled data from sources such as the Unites States Census Bureau, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Labor and proprietary internal resources. Analysts then scored cities according to five key indexes: Job market, 20 percent Value, 25 percent Quality of Life, 30 percent Desirability, 15 percent Net Migration, 10 percent The weight of each index was determined by public survey. People throughout the U.S. voted to create the hierarchy of desirable features. The resulting list of 100 cities serves as a guide for some of the best-rounded metropolitans in the nation. These cities offer opportunity, quality, and value to residents. We are proud to announce that Yardi has offices in seven of the ten top places to live, indicated in bold. Denver, CO Austin, TX Fayetteville, AR Raleigh/ Durham, NC Colorado Springs, CO Boise, ID Seattle, WA Washington, D.C. San Francisco, CA San Jose, CA Yardi selected these amazing cities as our homes long before they made such top ten lists. And we’re not just saying that to gain cool points. Employee satisfaction and wellbeing are top priorities. We want employees to live well. We don’t simply pull resources and amenities from these top-ranking locales, either. We believe in giving back. Corporate philanthropy is a huge part of who we are and what we do. In addition to sponsoring nonprofits as an organization, we regularly roll up our sleeves to help out on an individual level. If you are looking for a place to call your professional and personal home, Yardi...

John Pendergast first learned the importance of persistence and attention to detail as a musician. The avid guitarist plays music from a wide range of genres, honing in on the nuance within each piece. “There is a great attention to detail in playing music and different instruments,” explains Pendergast, Senior Vice President, CSD at Yardi. “There is so much detail in how to intonate and emphasize particular notes in a sequence with the right timing. You have to practice often to get it right, but you always keep learning.” “Both of those things are very relevant at Yardi. The need to do things over and over again until you get good at them is a key piece. There is also great importance in exercising attention to detail and making sure that we do the right things for our clients. ” As the needs of clients change, Yardi software and services develop accordingly. Pendergast and his team take the time to understand the details of the user experience. The team then creates and supports software that makes the user experience practical and seamless. Transaction processing through Yardi is one such example. The expectations of today’s renters and tenants are vastly different than just a few years ago, triggering a focus on online and mobile payments. To meet these demands, Yardi created a robust suite of payment processing options for clients: Yardi Online Payments™, Walk-in Payment System (WIPS®), Yardi CHECKscan™, and RentCafe® TextPay™ integrate with Yardi Voyager® and Genesis 2 to streamline rent collection, cut operational costs, and reduce processing errors. Residents can conveniently pay rent online, via text, or at participating retailers. Clients can also quickly bulk scan and digitize rent payments made with checks and money orders. Services are available for residential and commercial clients. Pendergast says:...

This month, we celebrated the fourth  anniversary of our Yardi corporate blog. This special project, created for Yardi clients and employees, has now been ongoing since February 2012. To date, we have published more than 1,200 articles. Our readers are at the heart of our content decisions and we applaud and appreciate you. Thank you for your attention to our words and interest in the real estate technology industry. Our mission is to provide a broad focus on the many places where our built environment and technology intersect. They are all around us, and increasing in number at a rapid pace with innovations like connected homes, smart utility systems, and constantly improving cloud-based property management software. In the four years that we have been blogging, Yardi Systems has grown, expanding to a staff of over 4,700 employees in 37 offices around the world. Our ever-expanding global footprint and product platform are a constant source of inspiration for new articles. As we look forward, we intend to keep providing you with interesting and engaging content. We welcome your story ideas, and you can reach us by emailing [email protected]. On behalf of myself and the editorial team, thank you for your readership. Here’s to many great years to come. -Leah Etling Editor, The Balance...

Editor’s note: The following interview with Aditya Shah, Yardi’s Director for Middle East Operations, recently appeared in Gulf Property magazine and is reprinted here with permission. Yardi Systems, a US-based large asset management and property management software solutions provider, now has more than 1,000 commercial properties, 50 shopping malls and 50,000 residential units using its software in the Middle East. “We have grown 30 percent in the last ten months alone,” says Aditya Shah, Director for Middle East Operations at Yardi Systems, told Gulf Property in an exclusive interview. The company has signed up with Mall of Qatar last month to automate the mall’s property management and accounting system with Yardi Voyager 7S, the company’s new mobile-enabled, label-compatible software as a service property management and accounting platform. Mall of Qatar will have over 5.4 million square feet of built up area, more than 500 retail units, over 100 dining operations, a 5-star hotel and more than 7,000 car parking spots when its construction is complete in the third quarter of 2016. It will host an estimated 20 million visitors in its first year. Since its founding, Yardi has set the standard for real estate software solutions with a combination of responsiveness and technical innovation. In an interview with Gulf Property, Shah detailed Yardi’s activities in the region. Gulf Property: Could you share with us the number of Middle East properties that are currently under management using Yardi’s solutions? AS: Yardi has a broad range of clients that manage a cross section of asset classes that include, but are not limited to, residential office, and retail. There are approximately 50 retail malls, 1,000 commercial properties and over 50,000 residential units that are currently managed on Yardi solutions across the Middle East. These include some of...

When it opens to the public in summer 2016, the Mall of Qatar in Al-Rayyan will be a modern paradise smack dab in the in the middle of the Qatar desert. With over 2,755,561 square feet of Gross Leasable Area, upon completion the Mall of Qatar will cater to shoppers’ every whim. Massive in scale, the planned three-story structure will span the length of 50 soccer fields. Upon completion, visitors to the Mall of Qatar will be able to sample food from over 100 restaurants, buy products from over 500 stores and participate in a variety of unique entertainment experiences, including the largest IMAX Laser 3D projection system in the world. Envisioned as a “sophisticated, urban-lifestyle market, the mall will be outfitted with vaulted glass ceilings, sidewalk cafes, and unique water features. A main feature of the project is the multi-level Family Entertainment Complex, which will include a 10-lane bowling alley and a 19-screen Cineplex. For fans of live performance, the mall’s Festival Stage will host professional acts from around the world on a 360-degree, multi-lift, rotating stage outfitted with the latest sound and lighting technology. As the mall’s floor space spreads out across the desert, so do its recreational opportunities. A not-even-close-to-exhaustive list of additional amusements includes an Angry Birds theme park, a mini-roller coaster and a flight simulator. An indoor “edutainment” park called “Juniverse” will allow children to play at space exploration and firefighting. Older patrons can participate in “Escape the Room” challenges, where teams work together to unlock puzzles in a set amount of time. Up to 7000 automobiles can be accommodated in the mall’s parking lot, most under canopies designed to deflect and control the midday sun and bathe vehicles in merciful shade. For commuters without cars, sleek, modern metro...