In today’s high-stakes real estate market, where rising interest rates and slowed acquisition activity are squeezing margins, multifamily and single-family rental property owners are turning to technology to unlock hidden value. A recent report from Brown Gibbons Lang & Company (BGL) spotlights one major area ripe for improvement: last-mile maintenance. It’s a deceptively simple concept—getting the right person with the right tools to perform the right task at the right time—but one that can have outsized impacts on efficiency, tenant satisfaction, and ultimately, a property's return on investment.
Brandon Dobell and Jason Meyler, both managing directors at BGL, explained to GlobeSt.com that the last mile is where many critical maintenance issues bog down operations and eat away at profitability. “How do you get things repaired?” Dobell asked. “How do you dispatch technicians? How do you know what needs to be fixed, when it needs to be fixed? How do you facilitate the payments in those types of situations?”
“It’s really like property management,” added Meyler, “and where some of the pitfalls are—from communications to maintenance scheduling to rent payments. And that trickles out to things like HOA management and tenant-landlord relations.”
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Although property technology—or “proptech”—has evolved rapidly over the past decade, most solutions have focused on isolated functions: leasing, basic maintenance requests, or scheduling. But according to Dobell, that piecemeal approach has created complexity when applied to last-mile scenarios. “The complexity that comes with that last mile reaches across every constituent,” he said. “Our approach with this particular piece was looking at how important this last mile is becoming from a number of angles.”
Those angles include dramatically shifting consumer expectations. Tenants now expect the same seamless, digital-first service they get from other industries. Whether it’s scheduling a repair, making a payment, or getting a status update, the demand for immediate, reliable, and transparent service has never been higher.
Dobell emphasized that, in the absence of aggressive acquisition and disposition activity, day-to-day operations have become the primary source of value creation. “With the last couple of years now, where interest rates are as high as they are, and the slowdown in acquisition and disposition activity in single family and multifamily, institutional and retail owners really have to focus on day-to-day operations as the primary driver for value,” he told GlobeSt.com.
At its core, an efficient last-mile maintenance operation hinges on preparedness. That includes dispatching technicians who already know what parts and tools they’ll need, keeping accurate records for future reference, and consolidating jobs in a single trip where possible. Efficiency not only satisfies tenants but also saves real money.
“If you have to dispatch a technician who's making $50,000 or $60,000 a year [only] once, as opposed to two or three times, you've probably saved $100,” said Dobell. “And if you can do that across your portfolio, it doesn't take much to actually change the yield on that property from 6% to 7%.”
Technology can certainly streamline these operations—route planning, inventory management, repair ticketing—but there’s still one variable that can't be programmed: people. “All the software in the world can’t force people to pay attention,” Dobell noted. “They have to change their ways, and that’s the most perplexing aspect to fix.”
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