By Mike Sloan

Bulk Service Agreements can help property owners provide an amenity to residents, with a measure of cost certainty in the process.  As with all agreements, the terms and provisions within the agreement will determine the relative value of an Owner-provided Bulk program.  Here is a look at three agreement provisions to consider.

Term of Bulk Service

Service Providers will often negotiate an agreement where the term of the Bulk Service will be the same length as the term of any supplementary Access Agreement. However, Property owners should be assertive about asking for a shorter term for the Bulk Services (especially if this is the owner’s first foray into making Bulk Service available to residents); think of it as a “test drive” to see if Bulk Services are a good fit for yourself and your residents.  These shorter terms can be structured for fixed periods of time with automatic renewals or the agreement could be drafted with a provision that permits the owner to terminate the Bulk Services and convert to individual billing for the remainder of the term of the Access Agreement.

Bulk Service Standards and Rates

An important consideration for property owners will be the level of services delivered to the […]

By Rush Blakely

Revenue share and other types of compensation agreements are commonplace between apartment community owners and the telecommunications service providers that serve their residents.  Despite this, there is no one-size fits all program.  Some revenue share plans are based on a sliding scale (higher subscription rates equal higher payout rates), some are based on flat percentage and others are based on flat dollar amounts – either on the total number of units or the number of subscribers of a given service.

RealtyCom Partners manages revenue share on behalf of our clients – at present, we are managing recurring revenue share payments on over 350,000 apartment units.  Most providers have dedicated groups within their company or in their regions/divisions that calculate and produce revenue share reports and checks on a regularly occurring basis.  Despite this regularity, this is not something you want to set, and forget, you should inspect what you expect.

RealtyCom routinely sees between 35%-40% error rate across our portfolio.  These errors can range from incorrect payout rate, incorrect unit count (impacting subscription rates), incorrect products included in calculation to incorrect payee and more.  Just last year, a large provider left out one month in their quarterly reports – this […]

By Annie Manfredi
CEO

Since we just moved here in August we really hadn’t had the opportunity to meet our neighbors. We had thought that we’d send them a note for a gathering to introduce ourselves and then Covid sort of interrupted those plans!  After watching the news night after night showing the long food lines and so many people struggling, we thought we should try and do something. So we used our HOA roster to send everyone an email asking if they’d like to donate food. We offered them to drop donations off on our doorstep or we’d pick up from their house if that was helpful.  It was lovely to meet so many neighbors and chat with them a bit from their cars as they dropped off their food donations. Many people expressed their gratitude to be given a way to help. The Auburn Interfaith Food Pantry staff was ecstatic and so appreciative of the donations.