What a fantastic day it was at the Royal Lancaster London – 5 December, as our flagship MRI International Users Conference came to the UK for the first time.

Some 600 attendees joined us for what was MRI’s biggest event in the region to date – and the largest-ever, single-vendor proptech exhibition to be hosted in the UK.

It gave us the chance to show our appreciation to our valued clients – and hear from many of you about the challenges you face and how we can help to tackle them. Bringing together delegates from across the MRI solution suite, it was a packed day of product updates, industry content, Partner sessions and networking opportunity.

Here are some of the highlights:

The MRI company update

To begin the conference, CEO Patrick J. Ghilani and Executive Managing Director for Europe Dermot Briody welcomed attendees and discussed a momentous year for the organisation in EMEA. It’s not been without its challenges, but the message was clear; not only is MRI now one of the biggest real estate technology providers in the region, but we are steadfast in our commitment to be the best.

It was also revealed, live on stage, that MRI has acquired Thesaurus Technology – news that was shared to the wider market via press release shortly after the conclusion of the general session.

Keynote address

It was an absolute pleasure to hear from two UK sporting heroes, two truly inspirational women and two genuinely likeable and engaging characters. Kate and Helen Richardson-Walsh, stars from Team GB’s gold-medal-winning hockey team at the 2016 Olympics, delivered the perfect keynote address – sharing the wonderful story of their achievement, while offering lessons in goal-setting, collaboration and dedication that anyone, anywhere could learn from. Absolutely superb, and we know that many of you said exactly the same thing.

Your product, in depth

While there’s a range of content offered by the IUC, the main focus is sharing the latest developments and functionality within your MRI product or products – and that’s exactly what we offered in two dedicated sessions either side of lunch. Users got to see the latest features and benefits within their solution and take away actionable insight from a range of best-practice hints and tips. There are a number of exciting changes and enhancements happening across all areas, and it was a pleasure to be able to share these with you.

Meeting our Partners

As noted throughout the plenary presentation, MRI is committed to providing an open platform that allows our users to incorporate the benefits of multiple software and service providers. We are truly open for business, and we had more Partners in our ecosystem that we’ve ever had before for a UK event – and we know that next year will be even bigger and better. Thank you to our sponsors for their efforts.

A well-earned drink

After all of this and much more, it was fantastic to relax and enjoy a drink and a chat with many of you during our closing reception. Without our clients and delegates, quite simply, the event would not happen – and we thank you all for joining us and for your continued support. We’ll look forward to doing it all again in 2019…

As a multifamily property manager, there’s no question that you need systems in place that can help you stop property management fraud before it happens. After all, whoever originated the phrase “there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” clearly never saw his or her property on the 6 o’clock news under a headline of “FRAUDSTER EVICTED AT LOCAL APARTMENT.”

Fraud occurs across many industries, and multifamily is no exception. The majority of property managers become aware of fraud in their community within the first six months after the resident moves in. Addressing the situation can lead to eviction, disputes, and a bad reputation for your apartment community. It’s crucial to understand the ways in which fraudsters can sneak their way into your properties and how to prevent them from doing so.

What is multifamily rental fraud?

When a prospective renter completes an application for an apartment using false information, this is considered rental fraud. The property leasing office is responsible for evaluating the application and determining if the information is valid. Insufficient screening processes can result in fraudulent residents living in an apartment community for free, or on someone else’s dime.

What rental fraud might look like

Forged documents, missing information, and identity theft are key pathways that fraudsters can use to get into your multifamily community. While some of these vulnerabilities may seem like relatively small access points, ApartmentList actually estimates that 5.2 million renters in the United States alone have lost money due to rental fraud.

Presenting fake documentation is a common tactic that fraudsters use as part of the apartment application process, particularly regarding paystubs. Did you know that “fake paystub for apartment” is such a high-volume search term that it shows up in Google’s Autofill feature? While some fake documents might fall on the “unbelievable” side of forgeries, others are quite convincing and reasonably difficult to detect. Even face-to-face interactions with applicants could be fraudulent, and as such, it’s important that your property prepare for these situations by updating your resident screening systems and training your leasing staff to spot fake documents.

In recent years, the application process for multifamily prospects has largely moved online, and fraudsters have come to take advantage of this. Without the proper systems in place to verify identity, your property could end up with leases signed by non-existent residents. These residents could be people who have had their information stolen, or they could be entirely made-up people, created for the sole purpose of building credit and passing as someone else.

How to prevent property management fraud in your multifamily community

Stopping fraud before it happens is based almost entirely around recognizing flags at the leasing level, to prevent fraudsters from moving in to your community. The best way to pick up on “red flags” that may signal fraud is to add multiple layers to the fraud detection processes. Here are a few things to be on the lookout for:

1) Duplicate addresses – Some fraudulent applications may have the same address used on multiple applications. Recognizing these duplicates can help you stop a fraudster before it’s too late.

2) Questionable personal information – Credit reporting agencies can be used to look up prospects, cross-reference the application data, and verify their cell phone number against carrier information. If a fraudster has used a burner phone number on his or her application, this check will reveal any discrepancies between the number and the affiliated carrier.

3) Verified rent payments – Reporting rent payments to credit bureaus can help leasing staff cut down on fraudulent activity by incentivizing good behavior. Fraud is less likely to happen if renters know that their rent payments are having a positive impact on their credit history.

4) Multiple credit card uses – If the same credit card has been used on multiple rental applications, and by multiple people, this is a red flag that warrants further investigation.

Catch fraud before it happens with resident and tenant screening

No matter what action you take to defend your property against fraud, it’s vitally important that you make sure your solutions are reasonable. Catching fraud before it happens is crucial to the reputation and upkeep of your multifamily property, but overly cumbersome processes can also drive resident satisfaction lower amongst renters who are following the rules.

At MRI Software, empowering property managers and other real estate businesses is at the core of what we do. To help identify rental fraud, MRI offers a range of resident and tenant screening products, including Resident Screening, that can help you keep fraud out of your multifamily complex. Plus, through MRI’s Partner Connect network, you can access screening solutions from our many partners and choose the solution that works best for your business.

Here’s a quote you’ve probably heard before: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” At MRI Software, we gladly accept the compliments, but the impersonations have gone a bit too far.

We are proud to have led the revolution in bringing flexibility and openness to the real estate software industry. Our open and connected product strategy is the result of 47 years of collaborative relationships with our clients and partners. That’s why we raise our eyebrows when our competitors abruptly change their market positioning to make similar claims, while at the same time, we pat ourselves on the back for being the first to introduce a winning approach for the real estate market.

By now, you probably know that the software industry is trending heavily toward open technology platforms. Think IBM’s acquisition of Red Hat and the Salesforce acquisition of Mulesoft. Open platforms that play well with others are good for business because they give clients more control and flexibility over the software – which we think is only fair, because they’re paying for it.

A brief history lesson

When Patrick Ghilani took the reigns as CEO of MRI Software in 2014, we reinforced our declared mission: to be the first in our industry to go all in on an open platform. Later that year, we had taken action on this promise with the launch of MRI Information Exchange (MIX), enabling our clients to exchange data between our solutions and third-party or custom applications through secure APIs.

By the 2016 Realcomm conference, the word was out. In an interview with Pat, Gerry Katzman, host of Conference Live, said, “You guys went open platform. It’s a risky maneuver. It presupposes that your user knows things that you don’t know.”

That’s right. No more ‘best of breed’ solutions. Consumers want what’s best for them. And being truly open is about more than mere interfaces or data integration. It’s about application integration and interoperability. It’s about the Single Experience™, when users will move back and forth between software applications from different providers without even realizing it.

Lip service

Today, the real estate software industry has reached a tipping point, and our open and connected mission has not changed. But, interestingly enough, several of our competitors have implied that they have changed quite a bit – but have they?

If you believe the marketing messages of others in our industry, they are suddenly fully capable of providing the power of choice through true openness and integration with other providers, even though they have positioned themselves as a ‘single stack’ solution for the duration of their years in business. But is it really a choice when clients can only choose from that provider’s own solutions? We think not.

With increased market demand for open platforms, and unsubstantiated claims of openness, how do prospective clients know what to believe? Organizations evaluating and comparing software providers are challenged to find the truth. But, not to worry — earlier this year, we offered some guidance in our blog, “10 qualities of providers that embrace open technologies.”

Often imitated, never duplicated

Healthy competition is always good for the market; however, any marketer worth their salt knows the value of competitive differentiation and unique positioning. That’s why we launched a new brand identity in 2017 reflecting MRI’s commitment to give our clients the freedom to take their business where they want to go with comprehensive and flexible software solutions built atop an open and connected platform.

And, while we’re a bit miffed to see competitors jump on our bandwagon and claim that they, too, are “open,” we remain confident in our heritage as the founders of the open software movement for real estate. We’re years ahead of competitors that will need to rewrite their code base and rebuild legacy products to bring openness and flexibility to closed enterprise software systems. What’s more, at MRI, being open is both a technology and an operational paradigm. Our Sales, Support and Development teams closely collaborate with our partners to provide joint solutions that meet the unique needs of our clients. Partners play an essential role at our annual users conference, and the MRI ecosystem was on full display earlier this year at our 2018 International Users Conference in Atlanta.

The misleading messages from other solution providers confirm the market demand for open platforms. Our concern is that it also creates confusion about whom to believe. It’s to be expected that the competition will seize the opportunity to claim that they also provide openness, choice, and flexibility. For MRI clients, this should sound very familiar. And for those of you who aren’t yet familiar with us, we look forward to helping you sift through the promises to find out what a truly open platform really looks like.

Charter Hall is a leading Australian property group that has grown from a boutique investment management firm into a full-blown real estate investment trust (REIT). Today, the firm manages nearly $23B AUM across three different sectors and uses MRI Investment Solutions to face the numerous scaling challenges that accompanied their rapid growth over the last five years.

MRI Software was able to provide solutions that would address Charter Hall’s challenges and enable future growth. With MRI’s comprehensive Investment Suite, Charter Hall has been empowered with reliable data to make smart investment decisions that have helped them on their way to becoming one of Australia’s biggest REITs.

A flexible solution for growing REITs

MRI Software’s comprehensive investment technology, designed to address the challenges of REITs, fully supported the organizational goals of Charter Hall. The firm successfully implemented industry-leading Budgeting & Forecasting software and developed unprecedented insights and decision-making capabilities. As a result of the implementation, Charter Hall is able to:

• Replace thousands of spreadsheets of data with a single system and provide fast access to centralized information.
• Automate historical information, property data flow, and forecasting in order to cut time spent manually entering data and improve report integrity.
• Provide group-wide scenario modelling and sensitivity analysis.
• Access leading technology solutions available at MRI, including the Information Management platform.
• Set up a system to send information from MRI to BI tools for sophisticated data analytics, including running scenarios for macro-economic transactions.
• Measure performance more accurately and standardize asset reporting.

Investment Solutions for efficiency and scalability

MRI Investment Solutions allow Charter Hall to maximize the efficiency of their budgeting and reporting. Real-time risk management, data integrity, and scalability were all used as guiding principles during the implementation. Through these solutions, businesses like Charter Hall can utilize the capacity and power of MRI products to gain control of their growth.

For a thorough look at how the MRI Investment Suite helped Charter Hall gain strategic advantage, support growth, and improve accuracy and control, dive into the detailed webinar here featuring Geoff Clark, Head of Office Finance at Charter Hall.

Brace yourselves. Packages are coming. The holiday season is upon us, and if packages haven’t already flooded the leasing office at your multifamily property, then just give it time. With the influx of packages, it can be an exciting time for multifamily properties that have confidence in their package management systems and a stressful time for ones that do not.

In a recent episode of “Building Success: A Real Estate Podcast,” CEO and co-founder of Notifii, Anh Tran, argued that despite the uncertainty, the holiday season can be the perfect time to gauge and improve resident satisfaction through successful package deliveries.

How can package management reduce holiday stress for property operators and residents?

The phrase “property management challenges” might as well be synonymous with the holidays. The flood of deliveries to multifamily leasing offices frequently causes headaches for both the property operators who become overwhelmed with packages and the residents who inevitably feel the results of an office’s preparedness or lack thereof.

A good way to keep residents satisfied is to provide direct notifications when packages arrive at the leasing office or are delivered to their door. Residents often face their own hurdles when it comes to having packages delivered. Some might be travelling, some might have family over, others might have shifting work schedules. All of these things make it difficult for residents to keep track of the packages they order, and it’s why going the extra mile to keep them up to date on all their deliveries is crucial.

In time, this will also take stress off leasing office staff. By taking the first step and keeping residents informed on their deliveries, you can easily reduce the number of calls from residents asking whether their packages are at the office. And as always, taking this initiative with a smile and a warm greeting can go a long way during the holidays.

Improving resident communication as a whole

It’s important to remember that all of these package tracking notifications will only be beneficial to residents if you have the proper communication strategy. While email might still be the proper way to keep residents informed on detailed issues, the quickest and easiest way to reach someone in the 21st century is via text message. Adopting text message notifications can help you get information to residents faster than ever before, leaving less room for something to fall through the cracks. However, different communication strategies will look different for different properties.

Adjusting office hours could also be helpful to your multifamily property this holiday. Staying open an extra hour of the day can give residents the time they may need to pick up their packages. Dealing with work, family, and vacations can be a hassle, and any measure taken to make your residents’ lives easier will go a long way when it comes time for them to renew their lease.

To learn more about package management, multifamily property challenges, and other real estate updates, check out “Building Success: A Real Estate Podcast.”

This week, IBM announced its intent to acquire Red Hat (read the press release here), making a huge leap into open source and hybrid cloud, and doing so in a way that a more traditional IBM may have never considered — by embracing openness and connectivity with others.

With arguably the strongest open source community, Red Hat has already figured out how to leverage the power of community to further technology. No longer do the best ideas have to come from the engineers in the ivory tower. Open source communities continue to drive innovation, accepting contributions from a wide array of talented individuals whose passion is furthering technology, not enterprise value. The community is not constrained by budgets or quarterly financial results. The community is focused on technological advancement.

The new normal

Hybrid cloud also represents a departure from a traditional, insular, enterprise focus where a bias towards IBM technology was how business was accomplished. By entering a hybrid cloud world, IBM no longer has to fight a displacement battle to win share. Instead, they can now work in collaboration with other cloud providers, including the client’s on-premise computing infrastructure, to enable solutions that are decreed by the client, as opposed to those that IBM may prescribe. Recognizing that the hybrid cloud is the new normal for clients is a huge step for IBM and how they approach and interact with clients.

The Salesforce acquisition of MuleSoft (which adds the capability to connect to all means of applications) and the IBM acquisition of RedHat (which adds the capability to connect to all means of infrastructure, as well as embrace the open source community) reveal unmistakable macro trends. The traditional walls of enterprise software and computing infrastructure are being reshaped to be more open and allow more connectivity.

We, at MRI Software, see the world through the same lens. Embracing openness and connectivity are keys to the future of technology. Organizations who continue to try to do it all themselves, who are insular, and who don’t play well with others will continue to fall behind the community of providers who know that we can do better together.

We’d like to applaud all who were honored at the inaugural MRI Innovation Awards! Presented at the 2018 International Users Conference in Atlanta, these awards were given to clients who have embraced the power of the open and connected ecosystem and pushed the limits of what’s possible for the industry. The winners of these awards embody innovation, change, and community, and we’re proud to call them our clients.

And the award goes to…

Phillips Edison & Company (PECO) – Impact

Phillips Edison, a nationwide owner and manager of grocery-anchored shopping centers, received the Impact Award for its pioneering use of robotics and machine learning in concert with MRI solutions. The result has been increased business productivity through optimized decision making, enhanced cross-functional data sharing and heightened analytical precision.

CBRE Group – Flexibility

CBRE Group, the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm, was honored for its innovative use of the MRI Information Exchange (MIX) APIs to connect its own proprietary systems with MRI’s financial and accounting platform. As a result, CBRE was able to streamline data audits, simplify reporting and reduce manual processes.

Mirriam Livingstone (Village Green) – Ambassador of the Year

Mirriam Livingstone, vice president of operations services at Village Green, one of the nation’s largest apartment property management companies, has made exemplary contributions and displayed strong leadership in the real estate community. Mirriam and her team actively participate in MRI users groups, and they have provided instrumental input into MRI’s residential management feature sets and partner integrations. As a genuine advocate for her organization, Mirriam’s collaboration with MRI has truly helped shape the future of real estate software.

VTS – Partner of the Year

VTS, the commercial real estate industry’s leading leasing and asset management platform, was selected as an outstanding member of MRI’s Partner Connect program. VTS ranks among MRI’s highest rated partners in client satisfaction, offers the capability to integrate with MRI’s solutions across the world to serve clients globally, and has one of the highest adoption rates of any partner among MRI clients. The commercial success of this partnership is possible through the strength of the VTS solution and the active, close collaboration between the MRI Partner Connect and VTS teams.

To learn more about these incredible clients and all the work they’ve done, check out the full press release regarding the MRI Innovation Awards.

This year’s International Users Conference in Atlanta was an overwhelming success, and so we’d like to thank our wonderful partners whose continued support is essential to the MRI Ecosystem.

We want to give special shout outs to our Diamond Sponsor, AvidXchange, and our Platinum Sponsor, Nexus, who were both incredible partners of this event.

At MRI, we pride ourselves on promoting an open and connected ecosystem that works for all of our clients. A successful ecosystem such as this is only feasible with partners who share that same vision and work to achieve it together, putting client over business. Through our Partner Connect program, we seek to offer our clients access to third parties who share our commitment to the “open and connected” way, and the exhibit hall at IUC was the perfect visual representation of how MRI Software, our clients, and our partners all work together to achieve greatness.

Announcing Spreadsheet Server – MRI Edition

But the client/partner interaction didn’t stop at booths on the exhibition floor. At this year’s IUC, insightsoftware announced a new partnership with MRI that includes “Spreadsheet Server – MRI Edition”. This partnership makes it even easier for MRI Platform X users to produce consistent Excel-based reports and improve financial and operational reporting. To find out more, read the press release here.

Awarding great partners

Congratulations to VTS, who won the award for Partner of the Year at the inaugural MRI Innovation Awards! The Partner of the Year Award goes to a partner that best embraces the innovation, client support and integration capabilities necessary to promote an open ecosystem. VTS has been a wonderful partner, and we look forward to working with them as they continue in their client-first efforts.

MRI also gave out several other awards in the exhibit hall that included awards for Most Active in MRI forums, Most Referrals through MRI Web Forum, and more. These awards went to well-deserving partners such as Loci Solutions, TopUp, Assetsoft, and RealFoundations.

As we reflect upon this year’s IUC, it’s clear to see that the MRI Ecosystem would not be possible without the support of our incredible partners, and we look forward to seeing how these organizations continue on their quests to liberate real estate.