By Steve Lefkovits
Partner

I live in a 55 unit condo community, with seven separate buildings. Like many people in commercial real estate, I’ve ended up serving on the condo board by default. Our excellent manager recently questioned a 28% increase in our costs for the eight copper, analog telephone lines that run to our ancient building callboxes, from $63 monthly to $81 monthly. That’s eight total phone lines for the property.

Even by the standards of phone companies, this increase seemed egregious. So I called a company that RealtyCom works with and refers to its clients to evaluate the expense and find us some options. We don’t do this specialty work, but know its importance. Within two days we learned:

• Without changing infrastructure, we could lower our paid telephone expense 66%.
• That savings translates into $6,600 of annual savings on our small property
• Our partner would do all of the paperwork and manage the cost for a 3-year period
• The work that they did inside of a week is completely outside of the scope of anything that our manager, or me as a real estate professional understood.

We will save $120 per unit per year from a third-party audit.

In 2018-2019, this same telephone […]

By Cristy Boucher

We understand our clients have a lot on their minds during the COVID-19 pandemic both personally and professionally as we navigate shelter-in-place orders and self-quarantine. We realize the impact this virus has at your communities, rent delinquency and potential mortgage deferments, as well as your leasing operations and on-site coordination/office closures within your teams.

RealtyCom continues to advocate and speak with Service Providers during this uncertain time, educate ourselves on pain points for our clients and remain solution-oriented for any broadband issues.  To that end, these past weeks we’ve participated in every one of the NMHC webinars, spoke with leaders at each of the major telecom companies, participated in an industry roundtable meeting with Owners and peers, and analyzed all our client’s bulk agreements to ensure adequate Internet speeds are being delivered to your residents.  We also support the NMHC in their efforts to maintain housing availability and security via their #ReliefStartsAtHome campaign to ask Congress for further relief for renters and property Owners from COVID-19.

More than ever before broadband availability and connectivity is needed for telecommuters, students, and general entertainment. As a general industry update, in mid-March the FCC chairman Ajit Pai asked Service Providers to opt […]

By: Mike Manfredi

Many new construction projects RealtyCom is involved with include utility relocation.  This often includes undergrounding existing overhead electrical and telecommunication lines or, in some cases, moving existing underground lines to a new location.  In California, most of this work is governed by the California Public Utility Commission’s approved tariff known as “Rule 20.”  Rule 20 consists of three parts: 20A, 20B and 20C.  Of these, Rule 20B projects are most often related to new development.  Typically, 80-85% of the costs associated with the relocation are paid for by the developer.

In order to prevent costly delays, any such relocation work should be identified in the design stage of the development, typically by the Dry Utility Consultant.  A resulting plan should be developed that details the following:

1. All the impacted utilities (e.g., power company, franchise cable television company, telephone company, etc.)
2. Contacts for representatives of each of the impacted utilities
3. Cost to bear by the developer and payment timing
4. Critical path from start to completion with timeframes for each activity associated with this work

Periodic check in calls with all stakeholders should commence a month in advance of scheduled work commencement and continue through completion.

RealtyCom’s Planning/Engineering Team works closely with […]