Tag: cash buyer

What is a utility concierge and what it’s not

October 25, 2022 by Carolina Narvaez

Who uses a utility concierge and for what purpose? A homeowner, common businesses and real estate companies that manage multiple homes, basically everybody at some point. 

Why? Because it’s easier, safer, and it’s cost effective mainly for real estate investors, and property managers.

A utility concierge will meet with you to discuss the services you need, and help you find the best provider for you. A utility concierge can help you connect water, electricity, cable, or any other utility. However, most of them only provide water and electricity options.

Connecting utilities through a third party avoids the company spending time and money in the shape of manpower hours, delays and overpayment because of a bad rate. Those numbers become even more important when we’re talking about a property portfolio of more than 100 properties. 

 

utility management for real estate companies

Then, what is it not a utility concierge?

It’s not a company that focuses on bringing the client savings in time and money to help them reduce costs in the ROI. 

It’s not a company that streamlines a part of operations for real estate investors and property management companies.

It’s not a company that goes beyond connecting utilities, to also provide the option to track and analyze utility expenses and make utility bill payments for the recently connected utilities. 

 

So is Utility Junction a utility concierge company? We go far and beyond that for our clients. Your company can rely on us for all utility management services.

 

Did you know that real estate investors and property managers can save thousands of dollars in time and money by outsourcing their utility management to a third party?

 

If not, we’re here to tell you: It’s true!

 

When the company starts to scale is when issues start to arise, because as the property volume increases, you need to track more details about the bills and properties, more spreadsheets are created and more connections and disconnections are requested in a not so friendly and tedious process that involves dealing for long hours with utility providers. Furthermore, some billing is received via paper bills and others via e-bills or paperless bills, which makes it harder to have full control of the due dates, amounts to pay, and bills to pay.

 

We bring Real estate investors and property management companies savings in time and money like no other company can do.

 

If you are interested in learning more about our services, visit our website or get in touch with us. We can help you save time and money with our utility consultancy services. 

Need utility management services for multiple properties? Schedule a demo with us to receive a custom quote that fits your service requirements.

How to Avoid Paying Utility Bills After a Property has Been Sold

June 3, 2022 by Carolina Narvaez

Imagine this: 

You’re a Property Investor, Cash Buyer, iBuyer, Home Flipper, or a Property Development Company. In general, a company that has a portfolio of properties and that is constantly buying and selling. Furthermore, you manage utilities for your portfolio in-house. 

It’s all going well, the business is growing and this happens:

The company’s accounts payable department discovered that utility bills were being paid for a house whose status is SOLD.

So, what happened?

Let’s see this first scenario: you have some of the utilities of your portfolio on autopay, which means that it is till you check the accounts that you realize that the numbers don’t match. What could be happening?

You realize that your company has been paying for a property that you recognize but something seems odd because you thought it had already been sold.

Between the things that could have happened, you might think “whose fault is this?”

Here’s the thing, humans are certainly not perfect and in the beginning, utility bill management probably seems annoying but not hard, and with a controllable amount of spreadsheets, it’s no big deal, right? 

When the company starts to scale is when issues start to arise, because as the property volume increases, you need to track more details about the bills and properties, more spreadsheets are created and more connections and disconnections are requested in a not so friendly and tedious process that involves dealing for long hours with utility providers. Furthermore, some billing is received via paper bills and others via e-bills or paperless bills, which makes it harder to have full control of the due dates, amounts to pay, and bills to pay.

Home buyer in scale, tips for cash buyers, Successful property investment company, utility bill management, late fees, billing management company, utility bill management solutions, avoid late fees

To make it easier for your team, let’s say you set up some of the bills on autopay. However, even if you hadn’t done that, it was always a possibility that a mistake like paying bills for a sold property, would happen. It happened to some of our clients. Believe us, it’s more common than you think.

if you’re a glass-half-full type of person, you’ll see that this is almost a good problem to have because it means you’re scaling. Congratulations if this is your case! The other good news is that you’re not alone, and there are solutions that can help with this kind of problem.

Home buyer in scale, tips for cash buyers, Successful property investment company, utility bill management

How to avoid paying for a sold property:

  1. Centralize your billing data. Instead of using multiple spreadsheets, organize all data in one spot. If you want to streamline the utility bill process, consider a utility bill management software.
  2. Monitor periodically the accounts on autopay. Or have a third party do it for you.
  3. Improve communication between teams. See if the communication channels are working. Centralizing data is a way to solve this issue too.
  4. Get advice from an expert in utility bill management to determine the best strategy for your company.
  5. Outsource utility bill management. Trust the experts and harness the power of technology, while being able to access reports on consumption and costs.

These solutions are proven to save time and money for real estate companies. If you’re ever looking to reduce the burden of manual utility bill tracking, our platform can help achieve 95% SLA.

Utility Junction is a solution that can help any business in the field of real estate to simplify utility & bill management processes. This platform can reduce the amount of time & money spent on administrative tasks and provide an infrastructure for analyzing financial data for both individual property and multi-property organizations.

Get a quick overview of all your portfolio’s utility accounts, keep track of payments and expenses, transfer services painlessly and remotely, get bill due date reminders, and more. Utility Junction’s platform is the only solution you’ll ever need to manage your utility needs end to end.  So, let’s connect for a discovery call & we can discuss the challenges you are facing in your operations. Know exactly what you need, contact us here or send us an email at support@utilityjunction.com