Planning The Future - Amid the COVID-19

Businesses need a future plan, even if you start a small business from home; you need to know what the future holds for your business. A business plan needs the head of the business layout strategies and questions for the team.

As a landlord or a property manager, you have a considerable business to think about. You have the safe keeping of your property, the ROI, the investment, and your tenants to worry about all the time. You also need to think of how to invest the ROI you are receiving to expand your business as a landlord.

But before you could do all that, the pandemic hit the world. Everything is at a halt now. Nothing is moving, no working is prevailing, and the economy is suffering. Before you were to think of a future plan for your business, now you have to think about the shaky future of your business.

Being a real estate investor, a landlord or a property manager, there are things that you can’t do digitally. There are some businesses, that can go digital, but real estate isn’t one of them. So, how are you going to plan the future of your business around this pandemic, that isn’t going anywhere any time soon?

Having a plan saves your business from many unexpected problems. Some examples, expenses over revenues, as well as hiring efficient team remember, going digital, knowing which plan is working and which one isn’t, these are some problems that need to be planned beforehand. There should also be a plan for emergencies, like fires, floods and in the current situation, the pandemic.

To keep the business from going down, you need a plan. If you have an idea in play, you will be well off in any situation. Many businesses think like this, they had future plans set in place, but nature thinks different.

When you think of emergencies, you think fires, flood or earthquakes, you never think about plagues or virus taking over the world. This is precisely what happened when the pandemic hit. The world wasn’t prepared for it; even the most powerful economies weren’t ready to take the load of social distancing and quarantine.

Work from home has become a huge norm in the last couple of months, yes it’s been months, but it sure feels like a year or couple. Real estate business is all about planning too, how much is the labor going to cost, what needs to be maintained or repaired, who is working on the customer care services to tenant complain, which unit is vacant, whose lease is up for renewal. This is all a part of planning the future to make the business prosper.

In normal circumstances, we would see the trends of the market and see what the market is telling us to change or continue. But because of the recent COVID situation, there is no indication from the market because the market has halted entirely. When we plan about the future of our business we are doing our best to predict the changes, but how are you going to predict the changes in a world that aren’t moving?

Think about it, for most business it’s hard to predict the future when things are normal, how can anyone predict anything in such unusual and unexpected circumstances? How is one going to adapt a whole business to this new order of things? The world is on hold, and so are our businesses, how are we to eat and take care of other necessities if there are no businesses and no work?

For a landlord and property manager, there are so many people like tenants, contractors, property sellers, property buyers, lenders and investors that they need to take care of. For a property manager, life and his line of work are entirely changed. There are SOPs to follow, but how? The tenant rented their place for the comfort and luxuries of the amenities, and now they aren’t allowed to enjoy those. Imagine the uproar the tenants would throw when paying the bills for facilities they aren’t allowed to use.

A property manager needs to keep the place clean, tidy and maintained, and they take care of the maintenance cost by setting a nominal fee that all tenants have to pay. Tenants have no issues in paying the fee because they are availing the amenities. But because of the current COVID-19 situation, the chain has broken. The tenants are not using the amenities. Hence they are reluctant to pay the fee, but the amenities and the special areas like gym and pool need constant maintenance still. This is when the expenses will overtake the revenues.

Apart from this, there is the issue of being locked down and social distancing. There are maintenance professionals as well as contractors that need to be hired daily; there are customer complaints to be taken care of. How is the manager going to take care of this is a lock don situation?

Hence a qualified plan that worked for all in the current situation needs to be made. The landlord and the property manager need to sit with their teams and work out a plan to overcome this massive issue. There is an urgent need to educate your team as well as and make the business as digital as possible.

COVID-19 is creating unseen ripples in the ocean, but the effect of these are lasting and real. We need to think about this situation as a permanent change and need to plan our future business ideas around it. Everything is at a hold, buying and selling, renovating and demolishing old properties, everything is at a halt. Before you think about the future planning of expansion, you will need to think about the future planning of keeping your business afloat.

Conclusion:

To cap it all, the uncertain times are going to stay the same for sometimes, but that doesn’t mean that you put your hands up and quit. What you need is a new plan, a better and stronger one that is according to the new world order.

“I just don’t know” seems to be the answer to almost all plans right now and I fear that it will be more difficult to shift back to being able to plan than we realize. I know that we and our business have held back on some projects and spending until things become clearer. I do not think that I am alone.