The struggle is real. Numerous multifamily communities contend with parking-related challenges, including shortages, unused vacant spaces and violations. Phoenix is the most recent municipality to approve reducing the required number of parking spaces for new multifamily housing developments, joining Austin, The Twin Cities, D.C., and several others. Parking ratios are now rolling out as low as 0.75 per unit in some cities and the total number of parking spaces has drastically dropped over the last decade. When parking becomes an issue on site, most solutions put the burden on residents–ie, implementing a required monthly fee and forcing residents to pay for what they perceive as a non-existent problem, which only fosters discontent within the community. That’s not a solution; it’s only replacing one problem with a different problem!
Americans already spend more than 17 hours per year just searching for a parking space (let that sink in!). In an era where consumers are feeling fatigued with mandatory monthly fees and bundling, it’s become increasingly important to provide flexible, self-serve options. To solve under-parking in a consumer-oriented way, the cure can’t be more painful than the disease. The optimal solution is to place the choice in the hands of residents.
When parking is a problem for a resident, it’s a problem for the community’s reputation and ultimately its financial health. Residents don’t give five stars to a community where parking is a hassle—in fact, they usually call it out in negative reviews. They also aren’t nearly as likely to renew their lease. Operators then lose revenue while the apartment is turned over and marketed. A situation in which low reputation scores affect net operating income is not the cycle anyone wants to be in. With all of this, the need for sustainable parking solutions becomes increasingly apparent.
By automating various parking processes with Zark Parking, manual intervention by onsite teams is reduced, decreasing the frustrations for them and residents. Properties that have deployed Zark’s parking management see an approximate 27% drop in average incidents year-over-year.
At Zark, we believe the solution is providing the resident a choice. Rather than impose a parking fee on residents with no regard for their preferences, instead, let them choose if securing a space is important to them. If it is, you support it! And if not, you’re not forcing the resident to pay for something they don’t need. This path is key to alleviating negative reviews, turnover and subsequent increased marketing costs associated with under-parked communities. The amount you save on empowering residents will far outweigh the cost of forcing fees on them.
In a recent study of Zark’s reservation time frames, we found that about half of those (48%) occur between the hours of 5pm-10pm. This is where communities can offer a ‘win’ to those residents and their experience! Using Zark, they can easily reserve and park without any of the hassles or risk of being towed for improper parking. This convenience and efficiency helps to improve the overall resident experience, and community managers can effectively reduce the number of negative reviews related to parking, as well as foster a more consumer-oriented approach that aligns resident preferences and priorities.
An automated parking solution will reduce friction in the community, save your onsite teams from stress and save your revenue. Tap. Park. Zark.
