Easier Leasing

Affordable housing applications

By Mike Sederholm on Jul 9, 2018 in Technology

Pinnacle Property Management Services (Pinnacle) manages a vast portfolio of residential, commercial and mixed use properties. Many of these are affordable housing units, developed under the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program.

The many types of residential properties under management, including senior, student, affordable, luxury, market rate, etc., can present a challenge for leasing agents who must be well-versed in each vertical of the rental property industry.

Affordable housing can be particularly challenging given the complexity of requirements necessary to comply with program requirements. Of course, the most basic of those requirements is that residents must qualify based on criteria such as income and assets.

Documenting resident eligibility is the most important piece of a successful affordable housing program. Moving from paper-based applicant and resident files to electronic records is one of the ways the affordable housing industry is evolving to work more efficiently. Pinnacle is part of that evolution as it implements RENTCafé Affordable Housing.

With RENTCafé Affordable Housing, Pinnacle saves time for leasing agents and ensures compliance with Low Income Housing Tax Credit program requirements. Those benefits result directly from changing to online housing applications and certification processes.

“RentCafe Affordable Housing is such an amazing system when it’s used properly. If you haven’t used it, you’ll be surprised at how much time you can save and efficiency you can gain with it,” says Nick Strzelec.

One of the biggest challenges of reviewing affordable housing applications is missing information. Using traditional paper forms, applicants can skip over questions they don’t have immediate answers to and forget to go back and fill in the missing data. Reviewers are stuck with an incomplete application and must reach out to the applicant to correct the omission.

RENTCafé eliminates incomplete applications, which saves time for Pinnacle staff. “RENTCafé won’t allow incomplete applications. It requires the applicant to check yes or no, and to submit every piece of information. 100% of the applications we receive through RentCafe are complete and ready to review,” says Strzelec.

“Our leasing agents sit down with prospective residents in our offices every day. Those conversations can become quite lengthy with tax credit properties. It can take up to two hours to explain how the program works and how applicants qualify for a unit. Filling out paperwork is the next step, and that can add a lot of time to the sit-down meeting,” says Strzelec.

RentCafe Affordable Housing automates that entire conversation into a self-service, self-guided process that applicants can do anywhere, any time. “We no longer have to rely solely on our leasing agents’ being well versed in tax credit compliance requirements. That program has a lot of complicated details such as how many pay stubs are required to verify income, imputed asset values, etc. RentCafe takes care of all of that,” says Strzelec.

RentCafe Affordable Housing eliminates lengthy applicant meetings, expensive file storage, difficult to read forms and handwritten notes with a paperless application process. RentCafe Affordable Housing and RENTCafé PHA support HUD 50058, 50059, Public Housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, HOME, Rural Development Section 515 and Low Income Housing Tax Credit subsidies. Log on to yardi.com/rcah for more information.

Pinnacle Property Management Services, LLC is a privately held national real estate provider specializing in third party management of multifamily residential communities. As one of the nation’s preferred third-party managers, Pinnacle’s portfolio includes more than 165,000 residential units and 2.75 million square feet of commercial assets. With its corporate headquarters located in Dallas, Texas, Pinnacle has more than 4,100 employees located in 30 states.