The future of utility management remains optimistic. While slowing from its original pace, the rental housing market continues to grow steadily nationwide with growth coast-to-coast. A little more than a third of the U.S. population now lives in rental housing making conservation efforts and regulatory issues more prevalent to owners and operators. Leveraging an ever-changing world with the complexities of the shifting landscape of technology is changing the apartment rental experience. The market has begun to alter nearly every aspect of the rental process, from leasing applications to communications with property managers to payment processing. Understanding what technologies are available, researched and reviewed is extremely important to the portfolio manager looking to broaden their reach to potential renters.

Knowing the road map is crucial to an effective utility management plan. Trusted partnerships with vendors that can help achieve your goals and deliver effective outcomes remains important. There is a steady stream of new information delivered to the marketplace and we strive to educate you with our experience and expertise. For example, one of NWP’s latest innovations, (the first launched under our new parent RealPage), makes budgeting and forecasting utility usage more precise with historic data, trends and forecasts. We have a good read in this issue about how to better your budget practices all year-round. Historically, there has been no set of standards of benchmarking and budgeting in utility management which can make an already complicated task, even more daunting, and that’s rapidly changing.

Back in July of this year, NWP participated in our first RealWorld conference. RealPage’s annual conference, provides the perfect balance of product training, industry trends and insights. The sessions focused on the key aspects fostering the advancement of our industry and how to do better business today. The conference was attended by over one thousand industry leaders. The networking amongst portfolio operators and vendors was priceless. In the keynote speech, RealPage CEO Steve Winn and I shared the vision for two of the biggest names in utility management coming together to become one powerful resource for property management companies. The best of both together, we’re going to reduce utility billing costs, increase conservation and keep your business profitable. We will continue to be an integral part of the growth of our industry and will deliver best of breed practices in utility management.

This issue gives a mountain high view of what’s already upon us and what’s coming down the pipeline in utility management. We explore the complexity of the overall economic outlook and some of the data is astonishing! We also get down in the weeds a bit and explore the movement towards recycling and composting on-site at the property level. The anticipation is that at some point most everything at a property will be either compost or recyclable material. 2017 and beyond is also going to prove interesting from a legislature standpoint. From mandatory sub-metering in every multifamily unit in California beginning in 2018 to the state of New Jersey trying to expand their submetering systems that they had originally banned years ago. The future of utility management definitely won’t be dull. As things progress on many fronts, we will keep you informed and up to date so you never miss a beat on the latest technology, regulations and happenings in the multifamily industry.

 

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