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Proptech has been a hot topic in real estate for a while now, but in 2020, Covid left an understandable dent to the whole real estate industry. With travel restrictions, lockdowns and working from anywhere shift, the property industry along with proptech companies initially took a hard hit. In 2020, global venture capital in commercial real estate proptech dropped sharply after the pandemic hit by almost 80% compared to 2019. Yet, the sector successfully weathered the test, most of them are seeing a rise in sales and vigorously recruiting new people.

In the upcoming years, technological solutions are becoming ever more important. For one thing, environmental requirements are causing a surge in data needs. Over the past years, numerous building certification systems (e.g. LEED or BREEAM) have been established worldwide, aiming to make the building sector more sustainable or future-proof. According to these standards, buildings should not only be planned, constructed and renovated sustainably, but also operated sustainably. 

Both publicly listed funds and corporate tenants are striving to be ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) certified. Anyone looking to conduct high-quality environmental analysis, should have started collecting detailed data yesterday. Moderan has provided customers such data collection tools for some time now – as a result, all Moderan users have accumulated detailed data for several years. They’ll have no problem in generating sufficient reports needed for these certifications. 

“One of our large corporate tenants requested a 12-month overview of their energy consumption for each meter, which they need to provide for the corporate ESG reporting. They were pleasantly surprised, when I delivered it to their mailbox in less than 20 minutes. This is what Moderan has enabled us,” summarizes Jānis Benfelds from Mūkusala Business Centre the value Moderan generates for complex business centres.

On another environmentally related note, the constant electricity price fluctuations make efficient utility calculations more important than ever. The tenants will expect even more precise metering and utility cost calculations and analysis. Moderan’s powerful utility calculation engine makes monthly utility calculations easier, smarter and faster than ever. 

All in all, using the right tools and efficiently utilizing data will help CRE companies work smarter and greener and uncomplicate property management for all parties involved. As Kristi Hakkaja notes: “We’ve seen first hand how real estate companies committing to adopting new technologies have the right mindset and tools to beat competition and turn challenges in their favour. Moderan in looking forward to even bigger appetite for proptech solutions and growth in the upcoming year.”

The post Property Management recap of 2021 appeared first on Moderan.

Property management is the operation, control, maintenance, and oversight of real estate and physical property. This can include residential, commercial, and land real estate. 

There is a fundamental difference between a real estate agent and a property management professional. Real estate agents may offer real estate management as a secondary service. Professional property managers, in contrast, are solely focused on managing your real estate portfolio and are dedicated to growing your investment. They analyze the performance of the individual investments and identify areas or opportunities, optimise the performance and grow the property value.

What Does Property Management Software Do?

Property management software provides an integrated solution for rental property investors and real estate managers to:

• manage
  • rental spaces
  • tenants contacts
  • lease contracts
  • utility calculations
• generate financial reports
• analyze their property portfolio overall performance. 

It is very important to highlight that there is a major difference between the two types of properties – residential property and commercial property. All-size-fits-all solutions often do not solve the complex processes within commercial property management.

Online property management. 

Professional real estate management.

Real property management software nowadays is mostly a cloud/online service, it allows landlords of small or large property portfolios to manage their processes from occupancy overview, utility calculations and exception handling to financial accounting and reporting. 

There are various lease software platforms specialized in certain niche situations, such as small portfolios of single family homes, to large mixed commercial portfolios. So how to pick the right fit for you?

Online Real Estate Management Software criteria to consider

For picking the right tool for you, it is essential to explore the features for not only what your portfolio looks like today, but what you expect it to evolve into in the future. 

The right property management solution should be designed to fit around the needs of the portfolio, big or small, with old or new buildings and for traditional long-term or flexible lease contracts management. 

Will the platform you choose be able to grow with you? If so, is it affordable while you are still in the small portfolio phase? Moderan offers a flexible user-based pricing model that makes it suitable for both a 3.000 m² portfolio with one manager or a 300.000 m² portfolio with a whole dedicated team behind.

Moderan online property management platform today is specializing mainly on commercial and mixed-use property portfolios. We do have some residential property portfolios managed under our platform as part of the portfolio mix. Our strength is to serve commercial property managers, nevertheless.

Who benefits from property management software?

The simple answer is: both sides – landlord and tenants – the end-to-end property property management software enables landlords to effectively manage operations and provide convenience to the tenants. 

Property management accounting software 

Many universal property management solutions aim to cover both sides of the real estate segment, commercial and residential real estate management. They try to do many things at once – including accounting. It may seem like a very good deal, but there is a BUT … 

Often those solutions better fit for residential property management, due the specifics with residential contracts which are usually short term and pretty standard and easy to renew. 

In contrast, commercial tenants lease management is complex and features a variety of exceptions and extension options. Only a commercial property manager is likely to understand such leases, and knows how to manage lease contract indexation of the appropriate amount on an annual basis. Right property management software should be able to solve those complex processes connected with commercial lease management contracts.

Therefore Moderan is focused on the CRE management, to be excellent in one main thing. That is: online property management tool for commercial real estate portfolio managers. 

What Moderan offers and adds constantly, is the compatibility and integrations with other systems that you are already using for financial management: such as – your current accounting software.

Property management accounting software integration example:

MODERAN integration app for Dynamics 365 Business Central app. The integration is used to exchange data between Moderan and Dynamics 365 Business Central. 

Moderan app is meant for a property owner who’s real estate management (contracts, properties, rent-roll and utilities) is in Moderan software, and whose ERP is Business Central (BC).

The integration app is used to exchange data between Moderan and Dynamics 365 Business Central. From Moderan, customer data and real estate rent invoices are imported into Business Central. There they are finalized and sent to customers. Business Central monitors sales invoice payments and sends Moderan customer balance information.

Moderan links each property data with the corresponding landlord company in BC – this way you have a full portfolio overview in Moderan while managing each legal entity as a separate company within your BC database.

• Synchronize your tenant data from Moderan to BC.
• Issue Moderan invoices and book financials in BC.
• Update customer outstanding balance from BC to Moderan.

Moderan property management integrations partners list includes also:

Utility meters/readings automation and calculations. You can have all aggregate data migrated between external, third party property management applications, directly from Moderan. 

The growing list of our partners and integrations you can find here – Partners. You are welcome to suggest us to connect Moderan with other software that you are already using. Contact us via info@moderan.net and we will surely take a closer look at it. 

Moderan have been in the market 5 years and as of today over €3 billion worth of assets, more than 2 million m² of leasable space – 650+ buildings and 8 500+ tenants are managed with Moderan Property Management Software. 

If you have more questions in detail, feel free to arrange an online meeting with our team lead specialist and we will be happy to answer all your questions. Just click on the button below and book a free online meeting. We speak 6 languages.

The post Property management and accounting software integration appeared first on Moderan.

Real Estate management checklist:

• space changes, unlike residential real estate, commercial spaces are often rebuilt and the space size changes. 
• Deadlines, there are always lease deadlines, indexation windows, notice periods, insurance requirements, etc.
• Utility calculations, they need to reflect all the vacancies, exceptions and tenant and space changes.

Keeping track of all these factors with spreadsheets is complicated even with the simplest portfolios. While Excel does what it’s meant to do really well, it certainly has its limits. The lease information is not centralised & automated, which wastes time and causes often costly errors in the data.

Differences between commercial and residential property management

When choosing the best portfolio management software, you’ll notice that they fall into two categories: commercial and residential. There are major differences between the two.

A lease for a residential property is usually short term and pretty standard and easy to renew. In contrast, commercial tenants leases are complex and feature a variety of exceptions and extension options. Only a commercial property manager is likely to understand such leases, know how to manage all the different indexation terms and track various CPI types and periods. Or be able to help, if the tenant wants to end the contract early, which is often costly and will depend on various lock-in and termination clauses.

Proptech – Increasing need for CRE management innovation

Recent hunger for technology is driven by 2 pressures:

If you are still using Excel for CRE management – then the closest answer for an upgrade is clearly Moderan. 

We can see there are many property management software options to choose from: some are for scale and pricey, some have robust basics but meant for smaller scale portfolios, some try to cover both sides of the real estate segment, commercial and residential property management and some try to do many things at once. 

Moderan has the best benefits for CRE management and we want it to be the best in this one thing – to be the best online management software for commercial real estate portfolio managers. This is one of the most important differences compared to many universal real estate management platforms. 

Moderan pricing is user based and not units based, which gives you better value for money. You can start small with a pilot including just one property and scale it, when you see the value to extend it to the full portfolio.

Moderan have been in the market 5 years and as of today over €2 billion worth of assets, more than 1.5 million m² of leasable space – 650+ buildings and 8 500+ tenants managed with Moderan Property Management Software.

Reach out to our team or book your free personal demo, to get a full overview for making decisions if it’s matching your property management needs. Link to our meeting calendar you can find here BOOK A MEETING. We speak 6 languages. 

The post Best property management software appeared first on Moderan.

Even on the best of days, managing a real estate portfolio is a challenging obstacle course of deadlines, space changes and the subtle art of utility calculation. Furthermore, the past year has accelerated changes that were already happening in property management. Even though the traditional office is far from dead, business owners re-evaluate where they need offices and expect more flexibility from landlords.

Tallinn-based start-up Moderan Solutions is cutting through all the different layers of challenges and making commercial real estate management easy and efficient. Moderan was born out of the real-life struggles of managing complex commercial properties. The software offers a flexible toolbox for property management, lease rent-roll, and automated utility calculations.

The toolbox should fit the portfolio, not vice versa

You might think that specialized software is only meant for the really big or very hip and trendy real estate companies managing a vibrant portfolio of ever-changing pop-up lease spaces and other trendsetting rentals. But all commercial real estate owners face the same challenges:

• space changes — unlike residential real estate, commercial spaces are often rebuilt and the space size changes;
• deadlines — there are always lease deadlines, indexation windows, notice periods, insurance requirements, etc. coming up;
• utility calculations — they need to reflect all the vacancies, exceptions and tenant and space changes.

Keeping track of all these factors with spreadsheets is complicated even with the simplest portfolios. While Excel property management  does what it’s meant to do really well, it certainly has its limits. The lease information is not centralized and automated, which wastes time and causes — often costly — errors in the data. And utilities calculation in a refurbished building is oftentimes a mess only few people can dig themselves through.

The right property management software should be designed to fit around the needs of the portfolio — any portfolio — big or small, with old or new buildings, traditional long-term or flexible leases.

Moderan — the key to portfolio data integrity

Moderan aggregates all the property and lease information and makes it work for the owner, not the other way around. It gives you one standardized yet flexible environment to see and manage all properties in one place and track deadlines automatically. For utilities, you only have to import the readings, add utility bills and your monthly calculation can be done in a matter of minutes.

All in all, it gives comprehensive transparency and integrity throughout the property and lease management process. This saves time and money, helps manage properties smarter, and maximize your property revenue.

Moderan property management software works best for commercial leases and mixed use portfolios with various types of rental spaces. A flexible user-based pricing model makes it suitable for both a 300 m² portfolio with one manager and a 300 000 m² portfolio with a whole specialized team.

Are you ready to bring transparency and peace of mind to your portfolio management? Ask for a personalized free Demo and find out more about Moderan:

This article was first published in THE BALTIC Times Magazine 2021 (Autumn – Winter Season).

The post Using Excel for Property Management? appeared first on Moderan.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, we need better solutions and innovative features for real estate insurance policies and expiration deadlines management. ASSIMO understands innovation and as an ASSIMO customer, you benefit directly from the extensive market and industry knowledge which has grown over 40 years, offering reliable insurance solutions in the real estate industry. Moderan Solutions offers perfect tools to keep all contracts (incl. insurance contracts) on track on timely manners with reminders alerts : you’ll have a clear overview of – what property, which contract, on what time needs any action.

What makes ASSIMO special for real estate owners?

For real estate professionals, one of the most important tasks is to provide adequate insurance coverage for their managed properties.

However, it is becoming increasingly difficult for even experienced property managers to find their way through the jungle of tariffs due to the complex insurance market. As a result, it is becoming almost impossible for property owners and managers to find an ideal and custom-fit insurance policy for their portfolio. This is where ASSIMO’s innovation comes in.

Advantages for ASSIMO customers.

As an ASSIMO customer, you benefit directly from the extensive market and industry knowledge that has grown over 40 years.

The direct effects:

• Your tailor-made insurance package takes into account offers from over 30 insurance companies.
• Cost savings of up to 25 %.
• No run-of-the-mill products, but customised solutions for the real estate industry.

Together we develop innovative features for insurance and deadline management. ASSIMO understands innovation.

What distinguishes ASSIMO from conventional insurance agencies?

Smart insurance concepts and innovative service are ASSIMO’s mission. This is reflected in the four steps that form the basis of their work:

The particular bonus of the ASSIMO: For residential building insurances, these experts even have their own different schemes of insurance coverage.

Find out more about ASSIMO at: www.assimo.de

How Moderan Solutions aligned with ASSIMO?

Digitalisation does not mean simply transferring old behavior to a new, digital environment. It has the potential to be so much more! At Moderan, we live the network idea and integrate complementary solutions into our software in order to really leverage the full potential of digitalisation. Together with our partners, we develop new functions and are constantly looking for ways to rethink networking and cooperation.

We combine the numerous features and advantages of Moderan software with Assimo’s benefits of experienced, objective insurance advice. The synergy effect: more security and more convenience for you!

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Get more insights about Moderan – the intuitive and comprehensive software to manage your insurance and lease contracts!

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CHALLENGE: managing a mixed portfolio with diverse tenants across several countries

• Using Excel is time-consuming and prone to errors
• Excel lacks automated analytics and is no use for tracking lease or property history
• Specialized property management software is often too complicated or expensive

SOLUTION: implemented Moderan to enhance their lease and property management

• All leases and information is in one place and organized 
• Fast and easy to implement; flexible user-based pricing
• Lease history about the property, tenant or space itself – comparing and analyzing data is quick and easy
• Ready-made reports for any period always available. 
• Utility calculations are faster and transparent
• Priced fairly and meets the needs of every small to medium size real estate company

Introduction 

Lumi Capital was one of the earliest adopters of Moderan and uses it to manage their mixed portfolio. Lumi targets four main real estate investment categories:

1. Local grocery-anchored retail stores, i.e. neighbourhood stores that offer other everyday necessities (pharmacy, florist, eatery, parcel machines etc.). While others were still focusing on large suburban shopping centres, Lumi already saw the future potential of neighbourhood retail. 
2. Office and mixed-use properties have enabled Lumi to experiment with new concepts and extra services for office customers, like car-sharing service for tenants. 
3. Built-to-lease residential buildings that they were the first to introduce to the Estonian market. Lumi has demonstrated that professionally managed apartment buildings built for rental purposes offer tenants better value than privately owned apartments.
4. Logistics buildings where the goal is to enable logistics companies to focus on their main business and give them a competitive advantage through efficient real estate management.

Lumi Capital is also an internationally trusted investment partner for many leading private and institutional investors. They function as a local operating partner who takes care of sourcing, deal negotiations and execution, as well as management of the assets until exit.

Challenge: you can never really trust spreadsheets  

Before adopting Moderan software, Lumi had a small 1-2 project portfolio that they managed the traditional way, with Excel spreadsheets. 

Raiko Uri, a Management Partner at Lumi says: “With Excel, you can never be really sure that you have the correct information. Someone overwrites something or makes their own version of the file and finally, no one has a clue which is the correct copy. And you can only dream of getting automated reports or reminders from a spreadsheet.”

Raiko also points out that Excel lacks automated analytics and that there is no proper way to track lease or property history. Piecing such information together from multiple spreadsheets was virtually impossible. Also, cost calculations in Excel required a lot of manual labour. 

But what about other lease management software? “Other solutions that we have explored are either too primitive or too complicated – implementing the latter would take too much time and money,” he says.

Solution: Moderan covers all the needs of a small to medium-sized real estate portfolio

Lumi started using Moderan in 2015 and today they use the full capacity, dedicated package, with integrated accounting (to Erply Books) and utility costs calculation. All of their lease information is now in one place and easy to manage and track. Implementing Moderan was easy.

Raiko Uri says they’d recommend Moderan for a small or medium-sized real estate company. “If you have a few buildings and one person managing it, you don’t need software. But as soon as you have more than one person and more contracts, spreadsheets don’t cut it anymore. Organizing and storing your information becomes more and more important.” 

If Lumi had to choose software today, they’d again choose Moderan. “For small to medium-sized portfolios, we just haven’t seen a better alternative to Moderan. It does everything it’s meant to do, and more. Very good return on the investment.”

“You can’t expect one tool to do everything. Rather you have to see how it fits in your toolbox. We use separate software for tenant communication, building maintenance, etc. For example, our accounting software Erply is integrated to Moderan and they complement each other very well,” he adds.

Outcome: professional property management as a competitive advantage 

COVID-19 put lease management to the ultimate test. Some tenants wanted to end their leases, others applied for temporary relief or rent reduction. It was crucial to get a quick overview of any contract, compare and analyze it and make corresponding changes to contracts and bills. For example, it is one thing, if the tenant was paying high rent and asking for a reduction; entirely another, when they are paying little as it is. 

Moderan made all this possible. “Moderan transparency saves our team hours of work each month and gives management the peace of mind that all is under control. Both are invaluable when you want to attract leading industry professionals to your team.”

Lumi sees a clear trend that the leases are becoming shorter and more flexible. This has been further validated by Moderan data analysis. Moreover, both the commercial and residential real estate tenants expect more services and improvements (e.g. energy-saving solutions), and an active hands-on approach from their landlords. 

Raiko Uri: “The landlord can’t just hand over the key and come back in five years to see what’s left of the place. They have to proactively manage and develop both the building and the tenant community. We have to stay two steps ahead of these expectations.”

“Professional and proactive property management is clearly a selling point. For example, we can charge higher rent for an apartment compared to a private owner because our team is always there for the tenant. Tenants are willing to pay for such peace of mind.”

Moderan co-founder & CEO Kristi Hakkaja says that Moderan has always grown in cooperation with its customers’ real needs and ideas. “We love working with ambitious real estate management companies. Lumi has been an ideal customer that has a long-term view and wants their operations to run efficiently.” Kristi adds that most software companies don’t care to work with smaller customers but you can start using Moderan with just one user. We’re glad to see and enable their growth.”

The post Case Study: Lumi Capital made professional property management their competitive advantage appeared first on Moderan.

In commercial real estate, leases are relatively long – 5, 10, sometimes even 15-year leases are very common. During that time there are countless deadlines coming up. 

• Rent indexations
• Early termination options
• Negotiation windows for regular contract termination
• Expiring tenant insurance obligations or guarantee letters

Keeping track of all those deadlines and many more is a challenge on its own. And while it might not seem like a big deal, the underlying stakes can actually end up being pretty high – managing deadlines directly affects your risks, revenue and property value.

RISKS – if tenant misses a deadline, it can become a responsibility for the landlord 

Many deadlines are the responsibility of the tenant. But if they do not take care of these, they may become the landlord’s responsibility. In many high-risk retail or industrial spaces (restaurants, chemicals retailers, manufacturing), the tenant is obliged to maintain valid insurance to cover for the potential additional risks. Also, some tenants choose to replace their lease deposits with guarantee letters from banks and parent companies. Both of these have expiry dates that often arrive before the end of the rental period.

For example, if a restaurant’s insurance has expired and there happens to be a fire in the kitchen, the damages for the owner and neighbouring tenants can be significant. Landlord’s own property insurance might not cover all of these costs, depending on the circumstances of the event. And that is the reason the tenant is also expected to have liability insurance for situations like these. The restaurant should cover the extra expenses, but if the insurance has expired, there might be nothing left to take.

That is why it is in the interests of the landlord to track these deadlines and make sure their tenants’ insurances and guarantee letters are always valid. 

REVENUE – missing rent indexations can compound quickly 

The importance of rent indexations is often overlooked. According to most commercial lease contracts, indexations can only be done in a certain time window each year. If you miss that window, you’ve usually missed indexation for that year. Of course, you’ll have the next opportunity next year but meanwhile, the revenue increase you were expecting from the tenant’s lease on the year you missed indexation, will still be lost. 

Furthermore, there are always limits on how much you can index rent. This means that you cannot recover last year’s missed indexation by simply doubling the indexation the following year. Consequently, the revenue loss for 1 missed indexation only accumulates over a longer period of time. That’s the beauty (and power) of compound interest. 

PROPERTY VALUE – depends directly on the lease revenue and risk factors 

And finally, your total annual lease revenue is the key component of your property value (as a rule of thumb 10-20x annual lease revenue). This means that if you lose 100 euros per month per one contract indexation, you can lose 18K immediately on your property value.

Another component is the aforementioned risk. If you have high-risk tenants and these risks aren’t mitigated properly, your property value can take a serious hit.  

That’s why it’s so important to stay on top of your property management deadlines. Missing a deadline here and there may seem like no big deal, but don’t be fooled. Poor deadline management can take a toll on your current revenue, portfolio value in general and future prospects. 

Managing deadlines  was actually the first challenge Moderan started out solving for property owners and managers 5 years ago. This is the most common place where property owners’ revenue is leaking, yet one of the easiest to solve with modern software tools (but not with Excel).

Moderan gives you timely reminders of all upcoming deadlines both via email and as a tasklist overview. The tasklist also includes overdue tasks to make sure you are always aware of your potential risks when some deadline has gone unattended. 

Moderan puts you in control of your property management deadlines, your revenue, and your property value.

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Do you want to learn about how to improve your deadline management with software?
Watch our video: (and follow the Moderan YouTube channel to stay up-to-date)

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Commercial real estate leases were already getting shorter before the COVID-19.

Remember the days of 10+ year unbreakable leases in office buildings? Well, they’re gone and not coming back.

The trend of shorter leases was initially driven by smaller quickly growing firms. Coworking spaces based their businesses on companies that couldn’t afford large office spaces in top office buildings and also needed the flexibility to scale up or down quickly.

But as the business world kept changing quicker and quicker, all kinds of companies started to demand more flexibility. And not just shorter terms, but also more services. From pop-up stores to stock-offices, you can see this trend in all commercial real estate sectors.

Shared workspaces company WeWork says that over 50% of its core revenue comes from companies with more than 500 employees.

Today, commercial real estate is starting to look more like hotels than long-term “homes”.

As previously said, all this was already happening before the pandemic. Sure, COVID has put an unexpected twist to the future of office spaces. Some people think that as soon as the vaccine is in place, everything will turn back to normal. Others say that people will keep working from home and office demand will fall drastically. There’s no certain way to say how and when this will eventually play out.

But as the only certain thing is the uncertainty, it’s understandable that companies want to keep their options open. This can only mean even shorter and more flexible leases.

This commercial real estate trend is also clearly visible in Moderan data.

The average length of new leases signed in 2019 used to fluctuate between 2,5-3,5 years. The start of the crisis in Q2 2020 reveals a change. From there on we see a clear downward trend for the rest of the year with new leases being signed for less than 2 years on average, making them roughly 30% shorter than before.

This means that companies are still signing leases, and do extend them later, but they are clearly going for the more flexible options.

What will this all mean to the landlords?

Managing your assets proactively is more important than ever. You need to be able to monitor your leases, adjust pricing, and advertise vacant spaces on a weekly basis (rather than yearly). You must be able to analyse what works well and what doesn’t.

Is there an upside? Luckily, yes. If you manage your portfolio right, you can charge higher prices for your assets. The tenants may want less space and shorter leases, but they are ready to pay for it. So you just need proper reminders to effectively manage lease extensions and clear overview of all upcoming vacancies in your properties. Good thing there are tools for that already available!

Are you looking to upgrade your property management? We’ve got the tools for you. Moderan provides a real-time overview of your property portfolio that allows your team to work smarter, save time, and maximize revenue.

Do you want to learn about ways to improve your CRE lease management with software?
Watch our video: (and follow the Moderan YouTube channel to stay up-to-date)

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