Pillar 3: The Technology that Drives Our Property Management Services
Innovative Technology to Fuel the Future
Technology fuels innovation, and here at LocalVR, the vital importance of technology cannot be overstated. That’s why the 3rd (and perhaps most critical) pillar of our 4 Pillars of Property Preservation is focused on the technology that drives our expert property management services. Automation not only ensures that our team (Pillar 1) and systems (Pillar 2) work together for the betterment of your property, it also allows us to improve our overall efficiency and gives us the ability to provide even more value for our property owners.
Today, we’ll provide you with an inside look into the 3rd pillar, Technology, which covers our Local Pricing™ algorithm, our handy owner’s portal, and how we use technology to provide top-notch inspections on the properties that we serve.
An Overview of Proprietary Pricing
LocalVR’s proprietary pricing algorithm is technology at its best. This complex data-driven algorithm is tailored to ensure that your property is set at the perfect market price, every single day. And, even though we rely upon technology to aid us in our pricing, there is also a human overseeing every step of the process to determine how we can do better, always improving performance over the long-term.
Market Familiarity
As locals to the market we serve, LocalVR takes pride in our data-driven approach to pricing, taking into account every factor that maximizes revenue for each of the unique properties we manage. Using our proprietary pricing algorithm combined with our expert local market knowledge, we ensure that your home is priced based upon factors that are supported by hard evidence to help drive our owners towards proven success while also keeping in mind wear and tear and long-term value.
Local Pricing Algorithm
No one else has the software that LocalVR uses to price our short-term rentals–our Local Pricing™ algorithm dynamically adjusts prices based upon a combination of local knowledge, information about customer demand, local events and comparable unit data. Demand fluctuates due to a number of variables, thus rates must also fluctuate -- and we’re tracking these variables everyday.
Data-Driven Management
Our expert revenue management team keeps an eye on key metrics to track performance and ensure that properties are meeting owner expectations. In order to get the right market price, your property is onboarded into our performance dashboard to track price indicators like occupancy rate, booking lead time, average rate, RevPAR, etc. We then compare it to similar properties in the market to measure performance over the long-term.
Owner’s Portal: Your Home Away From Home
Another way that LocalVR utilizes technology to make our owner’s lives easier is by providing a convenient and easy-to-use owner’s portal. This portal gives our property owners the ability to see all their bookings at a glance and book owner stays straight from the portal, no matter where they are.
An Easy Glance At Your Booking Calendar
On the Calendar page of the LocalVR Owner’s Portal, you’ll find a wealth of booking information available at your fingertips. This intuitive and transparent feature makes it simpler than ever to get an overview of your booking calendar, along with any owner stays or planned maintenance that might be occurring.
Not only does the Calendar provide you with an inside glimpse into how many nights are currently booked in the selected month, you can also find a few different helpful metrics that will give you insight into how your property is performing under LocalVR’s purview. This includes occupancy rates and average nightly rates as well as a breakdown of rental revenue and net income for the selected month. It’s effortless to just take a glance at the Calendar page and see what you should expect from your short-term rental, no hassle involved.
A Simpler Way to Book Owner Stays and Oversee Maintenance
Another advantage of the LocalVR Owner’s Portal is the ability to book owner stays, right through the portal itself. Rather than having to call or contact your property management company to block off the dates, you can save yourself both time and energy by just inputting your owner stays yourself–and voila, it will appear on your Calendar.
One more way that owners can utilize the Owner’s Portal is to oversee any maintenance that is needed for the property. Unlike other property management companies, there is no need to call to put in a request and check in on the progress of a current maintenance issue. Through the Maintenance tab on the Owner’s Portal menu, owners are able to not only input any maintenance requests that they may have, they can also track the progress of the work being completed as well as its costs and any job notes. Once an issue has been taken care of, owners will be notified and can view pictures of the completed project through this tab on the dashboard.
Other Helpful Features of the LocalVR Owner’s Portal
The LocalVR Owner’s Portal also comes with a host of other helpful features. If owners need access to any important tax information or just want to check on their income statements from previous months, the Statements tab on the menu is just a click away.
Another helpful link on the Owner’s Portal menu is the Resources tab, which provides links LocalVR resources as well as to your listings to ensure that all listing information is correct and up-to-date. The Resources tab also provides owners with contact information for their account manager, should any questions or concerns arise that are better passed off to a human.
Using Technology to Enhance Our Property Inspections
Post-checkout inspections are the cornerstone of LocalVR’s property management services and we utilize the latest technology in order to provide some of the most efficient and detail-oriented inspections in the short-term rental industry. Our ground operations team is provided with a custom-built software that creates photo-supported inspection and cleaning checklists to stage your property in spotless pre-rental condition, every single time.
When a home is onboarded with LocalVR, photos are taken of the property that demonstrate its original condition, which are then uploaded into our custom-built inspection software. Not only does this allow us to return the home to immaculate condition after every guest checkout, we also use this software to document damages that might have occurred during a previous guest stay and hold those guests accountable. In this way, this software gives both LocalVR and homeowners an advantage, as we are able to pass on the costs of these damages to the guests who caused them, saving time and money for our property owners.
An Inside View Into the LocalVR Difference
The 3rd pillar of our 4 Pillars of Property Management is one way that LocalVR differentiates itself from the competition. We employ technology in a variety of ways to benefit our homeowners, but we never forget the important human element of the equation to oversee and apply it in the most appropriate ways possible. Technology is meant to make all of our lives easier, and here at LocalVR, we use it to its fullest advantage to add value for our homeowners and continually improve our property management services.
To gain more insight into how LocalVR can help take the worry out of managing your short-term rental property, check out our Program page for more information.