The Challenge

As Taylor Susim, the Community Manager for the properties, told us, parking was one of the biggest thorns in their side. Managing parking in general was tricky, and the huge demand for guest parking exacerbated the problem.

Parking management 

Before Parkade, parking was managed using one of the most manual methods possible: a physical binder. This binder had a visual layout of the available parking spots, all 320 of them combined, with a space for the team to write the name of whatever resident was currently renting the spot. This process relied 100% on the team remembering to always update the binder, both when a resident leased a spot, as well as when they moved out or canceled their parking lease. 

Since relying on staff to do this 100% of the time was a difficult task at best, knowing exactly who was parking where at all times was impossible. Taylor told us:

“If one of our staff wasn’t going into the binder and making these changes when people moved out or changed their space, it looked like the spaces were filled. So we never had a clear picture because of user errors in our office.”

This painted the picture of a parking shortage that wasn’t there in reality.

While the binder made it look like they only had 5 spots available, they discovered after implementing Parkade that they really had closer to 50 spots available. 

Guest parking

This perceived parking shortage directly ate into how many spots they thought they had for guest parking. Using the binder system, they thought they only had 4 spots available for guests. As Taylor said it, 

“We actually had way more spots that we could have used for guest parking, but we didn’t know that because of the way we were using our parking system.” 

This was just scratching the surface of the issues with guest parking, though. 

The primary problem with guest parking was that they could only offer it during office hours, as staff would log guest-parking usage in a spreadsheet and assign a temporary parking spot. If a resident needed guest parking in the evening or on a weekend, after the office closed, they had no solution. 

On top of that, guests could only lease out spots for a daily rate of $25. That means that a resident who had a visitor for 2 hours paid the same $25 as someone who had a guest for 24 hours, making guest parking even less useful for residents.

They tried using a third-party solution to resolve this pain point of renting spots out to guests and the public, but it quickly became clear that it was not feasible. Since this other service took a 30% fee, they had to raise the prices so high that it became too expensive for all but a tiny handful of neighbors. 

Scheduling pricing changes

Of course, the binder management system also required manual updates to rentable items in Yardi. This came with all of the risks of error and the time-consuming nature of manual processes like this. 

One of the biggest problems they noticed, though, was due to a system glitch since they had a custom Yardi instance built by their ownership. The system didn’t allow them to schedule future price changes to parking, so they were only able to make changes effective that day. That means that if they did a promo where residents get reduced or free parking for a certain period of time, it was very likely that their regular rate would never resume. 

This glitch led to some residents getting free or reduced parking for years. 

The impact of these challenges

Perhaps the worst impact of this challenge is how much revenue the property was missing out on because of the wrongly perceived shortage. 

“There was a $10,000 deficit because our garage wasn’t actually full, and that’s because we were mismanaging it.” 

Staff was also beset with problems in their workflows because of this system of parking management. There were lots of user errors in the binder, making it difficult to know what spots were available, and making parking enforcement difficult, since they often weren’t sure if a misparked car belonged to a resident. 

Parking was also consuming about 15 hours per property per week from the staff. Between guest parking management to auditing to enforcement to updating pricing changes manually, it was one of the biggest lifts operationally. 

Residents felt the frustration, too. On top of not being able to easily choose or change their spot, not being able to reliably and affordably provide parking for their guests was a major complaint, especially in such a bustling neighborhood. 

The Solution

Taylor knew that her team needed to find a better solution to relieve the headaches for both her team and the residents, so she began the search for a solution. 

How they found Parkade

The Sares Regis team has an active group chat between parking managers where they share updates, problems, and solutions. After Taylor had been considering a solution for parking already, she came across a recommendation from a fellow property manager for a great parking solution called Parkade. 

Her interest was peaked, so she reached out to Parkade, along with 3 other parking companies, to schedule a demo. Our team got back to her within 15 minutes, scheduling a demo for the following week. Within 21 days, Parkade was fully implemented, with the whole team on board and excited for the widespread, positive changes. 

The changes

With Parkade, Taylor’s team could finally throw away their parking binder in exchange for a fully digitized parking management solution. With a web interface for the management team and an easy-to-use app for residents and guests, everyone always has an up-to-date record of who’s parking where. Residents are able to change their spots or lease a new spot at any time directly in the app.

This also eliminates the need to enter rentable items in Yardi. All parking is paid for directly in Yardi, giving them the ability to finally schedule pricing changes for the future. 

Implementing Parkade also helped them ditch their third-party guest parking solution since the team and residents can rent out extra parking spots directly in Parkade. 

The Results

Increased revenue

Now that the team is able to take full advantage of all of the spots that they have, their revenue has increased. 

Before Parkade, they were bringing in about $34,375 per month at STRATA and $24,184 per month at Venue. Now, just a few months into using Parkade, STRATA and Venue are earning more than $39,000 and $25,000 per month in revenue, respectively. Much of this is thanks to the correction in their parking strategy that helped them determine they were vastly under the market price in the area, as well as their ability to correct for people who were getting away with free or reduced parking for a long time. 

Part of this boost is also thanks to guest parking. Before, they brought in about $400 per month, but now they get upwards of $1700 per month from guest parking alone. That's a 325% boost.

Another small but not insignificant revenue win is the fact that they could get rid of the clickers thanks to the Parkade app’s integration with their gate system. Since they no longer have to worry about supplying clickers for every resident, they’re able to remove that from their list of expenses. 

Staff efficiency

“We’re stoked about Parkade,” Taylor told us. The entire staff immediately felt the positive impact once Parkade was implemented because it relieved so many of their biggest problems.

The 15 hours that the staff used to spend managing parking every week at each property has been cut down to 1 to 3 hours maximum. They don’t need to spend hours updating a binder, patrolling the lot for enforcement, making changes in their Yardi system, or fielding resident complaints about guest parking. 

Not only can they be 100% sure that the record of who’s parking where is always up-to-date, but they can also be sure that the price they’re paying is up-to-date. They no longer have to worry about the issue with scheduling future payment changes that occurred in their previous system. 

The team is actually in the midst of experiencing the Parkade advantage in a complicated parking situation that would have otherwise been a massive headache:

“We have this garage cleaning coming up, which means all of our parkers have to vacate the garage for like 6 hours,” Taylor told us. “Parkade has made it so easy for us to literally just go and make a reservation for parkers in our other garage. It’s so much less work on our end than it would have been before.”

Better enforcement

“Enforcement has been transformed.” Taylor said, “Before Parkade, residents knew they could get away with breaking the rules, and they did it frequently.” Now, thanks to a reliable system that makes it easy to tell who should and shouldn’t be parking in the lot, it’s easy to consistently enforce the parking rules. 

Cars don’t get towed if they’re in the system, fines get issued quickly, and unknown cars that are parked illegally get towed. 

This has helped the team let go of their former hesitancy to tow out of fear of towing residents.

“We never worry that it’s our fault because Parkade always ensures the right call was made.”

The actual act of enforcement has been made much simpler, too. Instead of relying on constant manual patrols or a chain of communication, residents are able to report improperly parked cars directly in the app and get a temporary spot to park in if necessary.

Resident satisfaction

The residents love Parkade, too. Of course, they’re happy that they have immediate solutions when someone is parked in their spot. 

But perhaps the biggest perk to them is that they have a cheaper and easier solution for their guests 24/7. Instead of trying to work around office hours, guests can grab a spot in the Parkade app at any time. 

The timeframes are more flexible, too. Remember the problem we mentioned earlier where someone staying overnight may be on the hook for the same price as someone staying for 2 full days? That doesn’t happen anymore with Parkade. Instead of full-day rates, guests are able to pay a lower hourly rate so that they’re only paying for the time they’re actually using. 

Residents experienced this firsthand during the opening day of the Giants season. Instead of paying the hefty price tags of surrounding lots, they were able to take advantage of STRATA and Venue’s affordable guest parking, and many paid only around $15 for the duration of the game. 

We’ll let Taylor wrap things up here, proving how much Parkade has transformed STRATA and Venue’s parking operations:

“I’m letting all the other property managers at Sares Regis know about this. We're extremely happy with the transition over to Parkade.”