For those of you who have worked in the multifamily industry you understand the challenges of trying to accommodate resident and guest vehicle parking in highly populated areas or developments that have insufficient parking space ratios in relation to the number of units within the community. According to the 2017 NMHC/Kingsley Apartment Renter Preferences Report, parking ranks as one of the community amenities that residents desire most. The question becomes, how do I solve my parking problems? What are the potential solutions available? In this article, I’m going to share different best practices that I’ve seen within the industry and the pros and cons for each solution, with the hopes that you can utilize this knowledge and my experiences at your property.

Implement a maximum resident vehicle rule into your lease agreements. This sounds like a fairly simplistic procedure to help fight parking issues, but I’ve seen several communities who do not disclose this information upfront to tenants, ultimately allowing residents the opportunity to bring several vehicles onto the property. By having communication directly with your residents and indicating this restriction during the leasing process, you will take the first step in preventing too many vehicles from parking within your community.

Control Guest Parking. One of the quickest ways to get negative reviews on your property to have a disgruntled resident who pays their hard-earned money to live at your community and has to park several buildings down just to find a spot. It’s very easy to have empathy for their situation, but several of you struggle to actually implement a solution, so let’s talk about your options available.

Option 1: Implement guest parking passes and control them during office hours.

Perhaps in the ‘90s this would have been the best available option, but in the 21^st century, there’s technology that exists to help make this process easier. Sure, this can be an effective way to understand the number of frequent visitors, which ultimately unmasks unauthorized occupants, but the process can be very time consuming. Forcing residents to come to your office or security to retrieve guest passes during office hours can be a huge inconvenience to them and place extra work on your management team and security officers.

Option 2: Utilize a third-party parking management software to manage guest parking.

Are there systems that exist which can help me control all of the guest parking without my or my staff’s involvement? The short answer, absolutely. How does it work? There are online and mobile application-based software’s that can provide real-time tracking of all guest passes currently activated at your property and allow your residents 24/7 access to guest vehicle registration without having to interact with the management team. In fact, these tools allow you to set monthly, bi-monthly or even yearly guest pass restrictions according to each license plate parking at the property. Instead of managing Excel spreadsheets and counting on your staff to keep the records updated, you can have computers do all of the thinking and managing. If any of you need help in setting up your guest vehicle restrictions, I would be more than happy to provide further insight and consultation.

Communicate and Enforce your Parking Rules. I cannot stress enough how important communication is to your community. Many of you may have residents who have been living at your community for a long time, so any change regarding the parking rules needs to be properly communicated. Failure to do so will almost certainly lead to disgruntled tenants. So you’ve communicated the new parking rules and you’ve licensed your parking management software, now you need to figure out the enforcement piece. The parking system of your choosing, whether archaic or technologically advanced, requires great enforcement. My staff and I leave at 6pm, how can I enforce the parking overnight?

Option 1: Utilize your courtesy officer or security personnel

If you’ve already budgeted and hired overnight security, the easiest solution would be to have them check to ensure that every vehicle parked on the property is complying with your parking rules and regulations. Many of these companies will provide this service if asked because it ultimately helps them be effective from a security perspective. If they are able to successfully eliminate unregistered vehicles from the community, this increases their ability to mitigate potential crime onsite. But there is one downside of utilizing your security team; consistent effectiveness. Although this may be the simplest option if you already have security, there are downfalls when the actual towing, booting or stickering activities begin taking place. I’ve seen several security guards become intimidated by residents, and ultimately, shy away from continued enforcement. There’s also a stigma of security officers sleeping on the job, but we will leave this discussion for another article.

Option 2: Enlist a local towing or booting company

My towing company came to my property and said that they would monitor our parking lot at no charge, could it get any better? To answer this question, let’s understand why they would provide free enforcement. Towing and booting companies are incentivized to tow and boot cars, hence how they stay in business. Unfortunately, this can lead to several problems within your community and reflect poorly on your property reviews and reputation.  We’ve had such a bad problem with this in Southeast Florida, that the county had to enforce strict rules and regulations that prevented towing and booting companies from providing enforcement services. When they’re having a slow night, I’ve seen these companies do everything they can to find tows or boots, which doesn’t offer a very resident friendly solution.

Option 3: Hire a parking lot enforcement company

Are there companies out there that only do parking lot enforcement? Yes. This is my recommended solution, but it too has a negative. It costs money to implement this solution. What cost? My local parking enforcement company doesn’t charge me anything. Well, one of the biggest mistakes that a management company could make is to hire a parking lot enforcement company at no charge. Think about it, what company do you know would offer free services out of the goodness of their hearts? If you’ve enlisted a parking lot enforcement company at no charge you can be assured that they are getting paid for every vehicle they have towed or booted by the towing or booting companies. As you read in option 2 above, this doesn’t provide you with a resident friendly solution. As a manager, your job is to ensure that you are maximizing the living experiences of your residents, and by hiring a parking lot enforcement company, you can ensure that your parking rules and regulations are being followed without fail while keeping your residents satisfied. Since the parking lot enforcement company is tasked with the sole responsibility of enforcing the parking rules and regulations, they can quickly monitor without fear or intimidation by problematic residents.

Investigate the Possibility of Restriping your Parking Spaces. You would be amazed about the effects that this solution could have in your parking lot. Of course, you will want to check with your local municipalities or counties, but if you are able to reorganize the striping of the parking spaces and create additional ones, this could provide a very quick solution to your community without the necessity to be heavy handed. I’ve seen communities increase their parking by 10 to 20 spaces just by undertaking this process.

Verify Resident Vehicles Parked at your Property. Often times, management companies will require vehicle paperwork prior to move in to ensure that there is a catalog of the resident vehicles parking at the property. As I’ve seen time and time again, residents will often have additional vehicles that go undocumented. How does this cause a problem? For one, you may have unauthorized occupants staying at the property and missing out on additional application revenue. I have a property that my organization assists with parking management that had over 75 vehicles parking at the property whose vehicle paperwork did not match the lease holders. Secondly, you may have a one-bedroom unit occupying two parking spaces where the parking is already at a premium.

Option 1: Utilize a third-party parking management software to manage resident decals.

As I had mentioned in option 2 of the guest vehicle parking section, there are parking management systems who can manage this electronically for you. Your residents simply go online and submit their resident vehicle applications and your staff reviews the online application for approval. Once approved, the resident will have the ability to register guest vehicles in accordance with your parking rules and regulations. This registration process is a great way to organize all relevant vehicle paperwork to ensure that all of the information matches that of the vehicle and leaseholder. These online systems are sophisticated enough to set the permit expirations to match the lease expiration and to provide resident details simply by searching any resident vehicle license plate on your property.

Option 2: Order parking permits and implement a system with your staff.

Many of you may have a property management software that can organize resident vehicle information, and although this can certainly work, the software is not specifically designed to manage your community parking. You can distribute communication letters to all residents and arrange times for them to register their resident vehicles with the office and for them to provide relevant vehicle paperwork. Upon approval, you and your staff can issue parking decals that they will adhere to their vehicles for your enforcement team to monitor. This may also be an opportunity to create an additional revenue stream for your asset owner. I’ve heard of several properties who charge an additional fee for every additional vehicle, as well as a replacement decal fee in the event that a resident replaces their vehicle and requires a new parking decal.

I hope that this article helps to relieve the parking stress and challenges that you may be facing at your community. Always remember that solutions exist, and that every property faces unique challenges, so you are not alone. I’ve highlighted the critical pieces of residential parking management, but there are certainly other techniques available to assist with this ever-growing problem that plagues property management teams all across the country. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns regarding your parking related issues.