The agency has just one high street location in Grays, Essex, offering sales, lettings and block management services across the Thurrock region, but is now responsible for more than 900 fully managed properties – up from around 300 in 2016.
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The Griffin team have more than 150 years of property industry experience between them, but they have also made great use of technology to multiply their productivity and automate repetitive tasks. However, as their lettings portfolio grew, they noticed that their previous CRM software platform was struggling to keep up with the growing workload. With so many properties to manage, agents were spending unnecessary hours going through inefficient processes – particularly when it came to chasing up late payments.
"Arrears management on larger portfolios is always a huge task for property management companies. Having the right staff in place is vital but having the right tools to manage arrears and expectations is also key." Ashley Froment, General Manager
Arrears have been a growing issue for letting agencies and landlords across the UK since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a PayProp Special Report published in June, 15.6% of tenants across the UK were behind on rent in May – getting on for triple the proportion a year earlier – and the average amount owed has also risen sharply.
In with the new
With their old CRM software coming to the end of its life, Griffin Residential started to look for an alternative solution that would suit their needs better. PayProp first appeared on their radar thanks to its association with ARLA Propertymark. The team also asked associates within the industry for their opinions on the platform before concluding that it was the best option to support their future growth.
Griffin Residential signed up with PayProp in May 2020, completing the onboarding process within three weeks. While transferring such a large portfolio onto the new system was a complicated process, the PayProp team handled the migration smoothly – and the lettings team immediately began to see results.
PayProp’s bank-integrated client accounts allow agents to check on the arrears status of any tenant in real time, and to send out e-mail and text message payment reminders to all tardy payers in just a couple of clicks. According to Ashley Froment, automating this process saved time right off the bat, allowing agents to focus their time more productively elsewhere.
Time wasn’t the only saving that Griffin Residential made by improving their arrears-chasing processes. At a time when agencies around the country are seeing more and more tenants fall into arrears, the Griffin team’s proactive and technology-enabled approach has actually cut their total arrears bill by £60,000.
