PrAtlas - Who's going to help Toronto's realtors manage record-breaking rental new-builds?

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TORONTO - PrAtlas -- Developers are building record numbers of new rental units in Toronto, encouraged by ongoing high rents. But Toronto's realtors and property managers will need help to handle all of the additional rental homes coming onto the market, according to Tom Samodol, Director of PayProp Canada.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation announced last month that more purpose-built rental units are being built in the Greater Toronto Area than at any other time in the last quarter of a century, with almost 8,000 under construction. Development in the city – part of a general construction surge that has filled Toronto's skyline with more cranes than any other North American city – is now outpacing the rental building boom of the early 90s.

Rental vacancies in the GTA are also at their highest rate in the last four years, according to real estate consultancy Urbanation. As much as 1.5% of purpose-built rental apartments in the GTA were standing empty in the second quarter of 2019, compared to just 0.3% in the same period last year. The availability rate, which also takes into account rental units in which the existing tenant has given notice, climbed to 2.3% from 1.4%. Apartment hunters looking to rent in the Toronto area will have more units to choose from than at any other time in the last few years.

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Payment processing pains

While property managers and prospective renters alike stand ready to take advantage of this new wave of construction, the increasing number of tenants presents a management challenge – given the lack of technology solutions automating the admin-heavy rent collection process.

Reconciling payments from large numbers of tenants by hand is a huge administrative task, one that most property management software does nothing to help with. Without the capacity to handle increasing volumes of rental payments, Toronto's rental boom could pass property managers by – and that purely due to the administrative burden of managing large rental portfolios.

"With PayProp there is something for all parties in the value chain, as we simplify the entire rent collection and payment cycle," says Tom Samodol.

"Real estate professionals get automation to lessen their admin load, 100% accurate transactional information, and comprehensive reporting. Tenants get more ways to pay and automated invoicing to help them pay the rent on time, and landlords get faster payments and instant information on their properties with the PayProp Owner App."

PayProp automates rent collection, payment reconciliation and outgoing payments to landlords and contractors, allowing property managers to focus on delivering excellent service and growing their portfolios instead. Payments can be reconciled in just two clicks, in real time, from anywhere in the world.

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PayProp's rule-based automation of payments and reconciliation makes it easy for property managers to scale up their portfolios without scaling up their administration workload at the same time. As a result, PayProp users grow their businesses by 23% each year on average.

The company moves around CAD$1.5 billion in rental payments through its system each year with bank-grade security provided by CIBC, and also operates in the United Kingdom and South Africa.

About PayProp
PayProp was launched in 2004 and has grown quickly to become a leading processor of rental payments and back-office automation for the property management industry, serving a large and diverse customer base of property managers and agents. Our platform sets the standard for speed and accuracy of transaction processing, posting, reconciliation and pay-outs, offering property managers complete transactional control and regulatory compliance. PayProp is part of the Humanstate Group, an international private technology services group with subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland and South Africa.
Visit http://www.payprop.ca for more.