New services company back-office outsource

Real Estate Weekly, August 11, 1993

In the name of cost efficiency, billing and collecting rent, tracking tenant arrears, paying taxes and vendors, and performing routine administrative tasks is more and more often being out-sourced by co-ops/condominiums and other owners and managers of residential real estate.

A new company, Automated Property Administration (APA), has been founded to handle administrative back office work for residential real estate properties and portfolios.

APA, which its principal says is the first company of its type dedicated exclusively to residential property administration, performs such functions as accounting, bookkeeping and billing, creating significant cost reductions for companies whose back office operations do not have the critical mass to operate at maximum efficiency.

APA's service can be used by co-ops/condos, individual owners, managing agents, multi-family housing developments, and financial institutions without any conflict, since the firm's activities are strictly limited to administrative work, and APA does not act as a managing agent or broker. APA does not engage in any front office activities for itself or on behalf of clients.

Currently, the firm handles more than 8,000 residential units, and interest in the new company is growing rapidly.

APA uses the most popular, nonproprietary property management software systems available. Computer hardware is state-of-the-art. Each APA client can get confidential, on-line access to review all transactions to closely monitor its finances.

All data entry is done by APA, unless a client requests otherwise, to ensure the integrity of inputted information. Clients are sent complete backup records once a week; APA's entire system is backed up every 24 hours. A complete back-up record is always maintained in a secure off-site vault facility to ensure against any catastrophe.

In addition to billing and collection of monthly charges to tenants and payment of all properly approved invoices, monthly statements include statement of cash position, a summary and detailed report of cash flow from operations, rents receivable aging, a rent roll, a disbursement report, an accounts payable report, as well as copies of all paid invoices.

APA's employees are all bonded. While the company does not sign checks, they provide complete check writing and document processing services, and clients remain in full control of revenues and expenditures.