On premise laundry rooms can add value and an additional revenue source to your property. How can a multi-housing laundry room increase revenue beyond what is currently being brought in? Moving away from coin-operated laundry machines and toward a card payment system will expand your total profits, provide a faster, more convenient vending experience for your residents and take the stress out of running your laundry room. In this post, we’ll show you three ways that adding modern payment options to your facility’s laundry room can add value and boost profits for you and your property.

Incremental Vend Pricing

Using incremental vend pricing allows you to increase your pricing by smaller amounts over time, without the restriction of having to use quarter increments. By replacing the perception of “putting one more quarter in the machine” with the quick swipe of a card, the price increase will have minimal effect on your residents. Raise vend prices incrementally with FasCard and stop missing out on potential revenue!

Roll into Rent

Having the option to add laundry costs right into rent prices, allows you to advertise your property with “Free Laundry”. Your residents will receive a laundry card that auto-fills with the same amount each month, creating a hassle-free laundry experience. Add FasCard’s “Roll into Rent” feature to your facility to make doing laundry more convenient for your current residents and help attract new residents to your property!

Time is Money

Collecting coins from each machine in your facility is time consuming. If you are paying someone else to do it for you, that is still money out of your pocket, combined with the uncertainty of how much is actually being collected. FasCard allows you to see real-time profits and sales data for each machine remotely without having to collect coins, so you can take control of your time and revenue!

CCI’s FasCard system works with existing coin laundry machines and gives your residents and guests an alternative to coin laundry. FasCard can do more than just accept payment; it can help you and your property make more money! Property managers who are looking to get more out of their laundry room are turning to FasCard. Contact us today to learn more about our FasCard payment solution and how investing in the right technology can take your laundry room to the next level!

A property’s landscaping and exterior painting are always kept up with, but a facility’s laundry room is all too often ignored and put at the bottom of the priority list. Showing your laundry room a little attention can turn it into a valuable amenity for your multi-housing property. Incorporate the following tips to give your laundry room a facelift and create a place where your residents will want to do their laundry.

Safety and Security

Provide a safe place for your residents to do their laundry by making sure the outside and entry ways of your laundry room are well-lit. Consider placing locks on the doors and making your facility only available to residents. Improve security by minimizing the risk of coin theft and vandalism, by simply getting rid of the need for coins with FasCard.

Clean and Bright Space

No one wants to do laundry in a facility that is dark and dirty. Consider updating or adding lighting to make your room more attractive. Adding a fresh coat of paint to the walls is an easy way to bring new life to your laundry room. Make sure your facility is clean and there are trash/recycling cans for residents to use.

Adequate and Reliable Equipment

Do you have enough equipment for the needs of your residents? Do you have any washers and dryers that need to be replaced? Adding a FasCard system to your laundry room gives property managers web-based management tools to monitor the status and performance of all their equipment live.

Smartphone Technology

Smartphones play an integral role in the lives of your residents. Smart technology in your laundry facility streamlines the way your residents interact with your machines and makes doing laundry easier. With the FasCard app, your residents can manage laundry cards, remotely check machine availability, request cycle completion notifications and even pay for cycles!

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Flexible Payment Options

Providing flexible payment options makes doing laundry at your community convenient for your residents and encourages them to use only your facilities. The FasCard system works with your existing coin laundry machines and accepts credit/debit, laundry cards and in-app Apple pay to give your residents a faster vending experience.

Comfortable and Inviting

Make your laundry facility an attractive place where residents want to come and stay. Consider adding accessories to create an environment that feels like home. Provide seating, magazines, board games and TVs to encourage relaxation and socialization. Turn your laundry room into an area where residents experience comfort and a sense of community.

If you’re ready to take your laundry room to the next level and start making your laundry room work for you, let’s talk.

Even if your apartment complex or other rental property is one of the best in the area, a decent amount of resident turnover is both healthy and expected. As such, attracting new residents to your property is always at the forefront of a property manager’s mind. Below are some effective strategies for enticing new residents to rent at your property.

Superb management

First and foremost, you need to establish an excellent property management team. A team that makes residents feel welcomed, heard and cared for is your most valuable asset in attracting new leaseholders to the complex.

Online reviews

When you have an excellent management team, positive online reviews should come easily. Don’t be afraid to send out automated emails encouraging residents to review your property on your Google Business page, Apartments.com or similar sites. When potential residents are trying to decide between your property and another, positive online reviews could be their deciding factor.

Lease specials & incentives

One thing that can be the deciding factor on whether or not a potential resident chooses your property is the lease specials and incentives you offer for new residents. Many properties will offer 4-8 weeks free, Visa gift cards or other rewards for simply signing a lease. This can greatly reduce moving costs and draw in new residents. You can also advertise “free laundry” by utilizing a FasCard system in your laundry room.

Social media

Potential residents may use social media to get a better sense for your property. By posting frequently on social media, you can show off your property as well as specials and events.

Pet-friendly community

Today, most newer properties have adopted a friendly outlook on pets. Pet parks, dog washing stations, and reasonable pet fees or deposits can help bring in new residents. Consider revising your pet policy if necessary and you’ll expand your pool of potential residents.

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Event marketing

Sponsor or organize fun events in your area and set up a booth where attendees can learn more about your property, get free swag and even schedule a tour. Even if they aren’t in the market for a new place, there is a higher chance they will remember your property when they start their search.

Unique amenities

Unique amenities such as pet parks, spacious 24-hour gyms, large outdoor lounge spaces, card laundry machines that can be controlled via smartphone, private garages or storage spaces, and package lockers can push your property above the rest.

Integrating technology conveniences into your property can reduce costs, save time and give your property additional revenue opportunities. Adding technological enhancements is a great return on investment and will take your property to the next level with current residents and marketing to potential renters. Here are our top ten technology-based amenities to consider adding to your multi-unit property.

Leasing Documents

Reduce paper by putting leasing applications and renewals online and allow your renters to sign documents electronically.

Paying Rent

Allowing online payments makes collecting rent and utilities easy. Give renters the option to set up recurring payments making it easy for on-time payments.

Maintenance Requests

Give renters the ability to put in 24/7 requests for maintenance online and submit pictures if applicable. This reduces the amount of calls coming into the property office and makes it easier for you to manage maintenance priorities.

Keys and Locks

Consider replacing mechanical locks with keyless locks that can be opened with a smartphone. This gives your property better security, makes it easier to change locks when there are resident changes and saves you money by eliminating the need to make and copy keys.

Package Deliveries

Package lockers are electronic lockers used for package deliveries. Adding package lockers saves you the time of receiving and distributing package deliveries and offers your residents a secure delivery place for their packages.

USB Outlets

Almost all of your residents own a smartphone. Adding outlets with USB ports for charging devices provides a convenient, tech-based amenity for your residents.

Thermostats and Lighting

Installing smart, programmable thermostats and light bulbs makes it convenient for your residents to control utilities in their unit from anywhere, at any time and reduces energy costs.

Doorbells

Installing video monitoring doorbells makes it convenient for your residents to answer their door from their smartphone and provides enhanced security for both your residents and your property.

Wi-Fi

Providing a fast, reliable Wi-Fi connection for your residents is a must. Having high speed and reliable internet is probably one of the most important amenities among renters.

Card Laundry Machines

Installing a card payment system in your laundry room gives your residents flexible payment options when doing laundry and allows you remote management of your laundry room. With the addition of a card system, your laundry room can become a great source of additional revenue for your property. CCI’s card payment systems can be controlled with a smartphone making doing laundry quick, easy and stress free for your residents.

Having a common laundry room is an attractive, convenient amenity for your residents and can make your life as a property owner easier. Here are some advantages of having a community laundry room versus laundry machines in each unit, from both the perspective of the laundry user and a property manager.

Benefits of a Laundry Room For Residents and Guests

• More Space: Multi-housing units typically don’t have a lot of square footage to spare. The place where laundry machines would go could be used for extra storage or an additional closet.
• Less Stress: Renters don’t have to buy, move and connect machines or perform repairs. CCI’s FasCard system takes the hassle out of doing laundry by providing a smartphone app to manage laundry cards, remotely check machine availability, request cycle completion notifications and make mobile wallet payments!
• Multiple and Larger Loads: Residents save time by being able to do multiple loads at once in a laundry room versus one at a time in-unit. Also, full size machines might not fit into multi-housing units. With full size machines in a laundry room, renters have the ability to do larger loads and wash bigger items such as bedding.
• Saves Money: Residents don’t have to spend money on buying a washer and dryer if it’s not provided by the property, they only have to spend money in the laundry room as needed.

Benefits of a Laundry Room for Property Owners and Managers

• Save Money: Having machines in each unit uses more water and energy, which requires more plumbing and electrical setup. Having a laundry room can save you money on utilities, connection requirements, as well as the cost of buying machines for every unit.
• Less Maintenance: With in-unit laundry machines comes a greater risk of flooding and water damage, which requires timely repairs. If maintenance is needed in a laundry room, repairs are centrally located, making damage quick to detect and repairs more efficient.
• Save Time: CCI’s FasCard system eliminates coin completely and allows you to manage your facility’s laundry room remotely from any smart device. Seeing real-time profits and sales data for each machine without having to collect coins saves you time.
• Extra Income: A laundry room can generate additional revenue for your property. By adding card acceptance with CCI’s FasCard system, you can increase profits by selling cycle upgrades, raising vend prices incrementally and growing your community through marketing programs.

Today’s multi-housing laundry rooms look very different than facility laundry rooms of the past. Property managers who are looking to transform their laundry room into a modern amenity for their facility are turning to the FasCard system. Implementing this system into your laundry room gives you the ability to provide your residents with benefits that will bring value to your property and take the stress out of running a laundry room!

Technology has made just about everything in our lives more convenient and that includes the management and use of multi-unit laundry rooms. Having modern amenities in your laundry room such as online monitoring via smartphones and card payment systems will bring value to your property and set your property apart from the competition. As an owner or manager, introducing automated systems into your laundry room will save you time and money and reduce the stress of running a laundry room. In this blog post, we’ll show you how bringing technology into your multi-unit laundry room will turn it into a profitable and valued amenity of your property that is easy to manage.

Remote Management

Installing CCI’s FasCard system in your laundry room gives you the ability to manage cash and collections, provide immediate customer service, configure vend prices, implement marketing programs, run sales reports and monitor the status of equipment – all live and remotely from your smartphone or laptop! Having web-based management means accessing your FasCard system is simple and can be performed from any web browser so you can manage your laundry room at anytime from anywhere. With FasCard you can accept cash payments and resolve problems without having someone physically there. If a tenant or guest has a problem with a machine, you can simply log into their account and refund their money.

Card and Coin Auditing

Using FasCard in your laundry room allows you to audit both coin and card sales on any specific machine. This will give you the ability to not only track the success of your credit card sales but monitor the number of coins in each machine. You can configure FasCard to send you email notifications when coin boxes reach capacity so you collect only when you need to. If you are having someone else collect for you, you can receive an email notification that details the coins collected from each machine once your collector has finished. Having less cash in your machines will reduce theft and you’ll always know at any time how much money is in your laundry room. FasCard isn’t just a card payment system; it introduces a holistic solution to running your laundry room.

Flexible Payment Options

Installing FasCard in your laundry room makes the experience of doing laundry easy, quick and stress free. Whether a customer prefers using currency or credit/debit cards, FasCard provides the ultimate in convenience by accepting all types of payment. Customers can even insert some coins and swipe their card for the balance. By adding card acceptance, you are make it easier for your customers to use your laundry room, encourage more use of your machines and therefore produce more revenue for you. No longer do your residents have to obtain coins and cash or deal with the hassles of coin dispensing equipment. In addition, our F2 Card Reader makes it even easier for your customers to pay for their cycles.

Smartphone App

Residents want to complete their laundry as quickly and efficiently as possible. With FasCard, instead of your consumer having to revolve their schedule around doing laundry, the laundry card system makes it convenient for them to do their laundry and easily fits into their busy schedule. Smartphones play an integral role in our lives and FasCard includes a smartphone app for today’s latest devices. From their smartphone, your customers will be able to create an account, add value, manage loyalty cards, check machine availability, request cycle completion notifications and even start a machine! No longer do your residents have to make unnecessary trips to the laundry room to check the status of machines, sit around and wait for their cycle to complete or risk loss of clothes sitting in the machines for hours.

CCI’s systems will give you the technological tools to create a modern laundry room that is a valuable business, easy to manage, and meets the needs of residents and guests. Our FasCard system is a perfect fit for multi-housing applications such as apartment buildings, hotels, condominium buildings and residence halls. If you’re a property owner or manager looking to get more out of your facility’s laundry room, contact us today to learn more about our FasCard payment solutions and how investing in the technology can take your laundry room to the next level!

The challenge of multi-housing or community area laundry rooms

Managing a laundry room in a single home is difficult enough. Now imagine putting hundreds of these single family homes together in an apartment building and limiting the laundry facilities to a few rooms. In this case, the problems of managing a single family laundry room are multiplied exponentially. This is the what multi-housing laundry managers face each day of the week.

It’s true that merely keeping everything merely running in a multi-housing building’s laundry room is a tough enough task; there’s coin collection, keeping up with a laundry route, machine maintenance, refurbishing or remodeling where necessary, shopping for the best rate on liability insurance, and bonding your employees.

Of course, there are inherent problems in any self-service business, and specifically for the laundry room, these take the form of broken machines, stolen vends, and displeased residents as some of the most common.

Yet even with all the possible negatives—which to be sure are few compared with the realities of managing a multi-housing facility—the positive, profitable windfall of having clean and convenient community-area laundry rooms equates to more money for the multi-family property. Set up a laundry room that meets or exceeds your residents’ needs, with the latest consumer demands (such as doing away with quarters), and these community amenities afford a property an attractive on-site asset. Clean laundry facilities are a boon to both current residents and potential renters.

Why is managing a multi-family laundry room so difficult?

Many apartment owners and managers are not as concerned about their laundry facilities as they are keeping their residents in units, finding new renters, and preventing vacancies. This is completely understandable, as utilities are sometimes packaged together in one bill, making it difficult to connect the dots to see much cash a community laundry room is actually netting.

This is especially the case when you add a laundry route operator to the equation. Laundry route operators collect coins and perform maintenance, yet laundry routes are infamous among top laundry insiders for having more than downsides and disadvantages and upshots, not the least of which being dubious profit splits with the multi-family facility.

Many managers of multi-housing apartment buildings realize the potential upsides of having a comfortable, safe, and profitable laundry room, and will do everything they can to make their laundry rooms seem more appealing to residents. Laundromats often set up shop near large urban areas with high concentrations of multi-family dwellings and apartments. More often than not, however, managers of multi-family units will outsource the actual collection and maintenance of their machines to a corporate laundry route with outside contractors whom they hire as laundry route operators.

The self-service laundromat industry has faced a revolution; the way, rate, and frequency with which residents interact with traditional community laundry rooms and storefront laundromats is changing drastically. Many community laundry rooms are following popular new industry trends, including comfort amenities like digital laundry payment for cashless machines, a more capacious and inviting ambience, free WiFi, children’s areas, and features like loyalty programs, which allow residents to add value at any digital card reader to win free cycles, receive group discounts, and big bill bonuses (buy $50, get $55).

What’s the answer?

For more information on these subjects and many more relating to multi-housing laundry, the go-to resource for any multi-housing manager is our whitepaper, Must Know Tips on Managing a Multi-Unit Laundry Room. This whitepaper contains the invaluable tips you need to ensure you’re reaping the most out of your current resources.

Adding amenities like flatscreen TVs may bring in a few extra residents to catch a few minutes of the news while their clothes dry, but what will keep them from frequenting or much less, becoming a patron of, a trendy local laundromat (or, if applicable, using in-unit connections in the comfort of their home)? Is it the loyalty programs that many laundromats offer? Or is it the convenience factor—such as giving your residents the ability to pay with a bank card—that will keep them from taking their laundry elsewhere?

This guide will help answer these questions and will also allow you to determine the steps you need to take to transform your community laundry room from a source of constant worry to a profitable asset. Or feel free to give Card Concepts Inc. a call at 1 (866) 860-1660 regarding any questions relating to multi-housing laundry rooms.  

Reclaim your most profitable asset from laundry route operators

Are you tired of outsourcing your laundry room service to laundry route operators? Giving a set of keys to another company like a laundry route could mean you’re missing out on the majority of profit from your most valuable on-site asset.

Laundry route operators are a ubiquitous presence at multi-housing properties. These large, national route corporations close deals by promising to supply laundry equipment, maintain it, and make regular collection rounds. You may not realize that the machines in your building could be generating thousands of dollars. Route deals typically include a revenue split, with a portion going to the property owner and the rest to the laundry route operator. Sounds like a great deal… Or does it?

Rethink your situation

Well, it certainly depends. What kind of money are we actually talking about here? If the machines are constantly filled to capacity with vending funds, that could translate into a lot of revenue at the end of the month—quite possibly more than the initial investment startup cost, which at first seemed like a no-brainer deal when offered by a laundry route company. You have to wonder, if a sizable cut of the collections weren’t continually profitable—far beyond what fraction route corporations give back to properties—how would a company be able to offer all this?

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And since most laundry route operators are generally very secretive about the amount of money they collect from your machines, you don’t know how much you’re making a week or per month. Not getting the real figures could mean you might not ever know if you made the right decision.

Reroute away from split profits

What if you were able to take back full control of your laundry room, while retaining the convenience of a laundry route operator? 

With FasCard, our premier smart laundry card system, you still won’t have to deal with quarters if you don’t want to. Your laundry machines will continue to have the ability to accept them, but this means that residents will be given the option to choose which payment method works best for them. And with more options to pay comes more sales, and in turn, more profit. 

Reboot with a digital card-op payment system

FasCard is the premier digital card-payment system which becomes your full-service laundry route operator. By making the move away from outdated laundry routes to FasCard, you will be able to:

• Attract potential tenants by increasing the appeal of your amenities;
• Allow current residents to receive wireless notifications about their machine’s progress;
• Adjust the time-of-day vend price in penny increments;
• Choose your own merchant processor;
• Access data from your machines remotely;
• Shut off machines that are being serviced via smartphone;
• Charge more or less depending on water temperature (which offsets utility bills, such as electricity, gas, and water);
• Implement a loyalty card program, which will allow residents to,
  • Load up value using cash or credit/debit cards at self-service kiosks
  • Pay using their smartphones

FasCard allows you reestablish control over your laundry room. With a sophisticated card-operated laundry payment system, you get the benefits of a route, but none of its disadvantages—meaning you get the entirety of the profits, are not subject to the competence of the operators, and you know exactly how much money you’re collecting from your machines. And with its smart phone interface, you have the entire administration of your laundry facilities at your fingertips.

Why split profits with someone else? With FasCard, you can eliminate coin, automate equipment, and regulate revenue.

Our premium whitepaper, “Must Know Tips on Managing a Multi-Unit Laundry Room”, is a must-read for anyone in the multi-housing industry. Get the basics and more advanced tips and techniques on managing your laundry room today. Or, to learn more about FasCard today, give Card Concepts Inc. a call at 1 (866) 860-1660.