Cornerstone recently had the pleasure of being onsite at Davidon and meeting the Property Management team. We look forward to a long and productive relationship and hope we can get back to visit again soon!

Baxt Ingui, a New York City architecture and interior design firm, achieved a few modest (wink) goals so far: The first certified passive house in a landmark district, the first certified passive house in Manhattan (also LEED Platinum), and the first Passive Plus house in the United States.

These projects, and several others shown on their website, highlight their commitment to retrofit existing houses to “use a fraction of the energy that a typical residence consumes, have better air quality, and [be] more comfortable to live in.”

Check out the entire gallery on their website: https://www.baxtingui.com/passive-house/

This edition of our popular newsletter shares with you:

• Systems Selections are booming
• SQL Spring Cleaning
• Our 2019 Webinar schedule (register now!)
• Fun websites that reveal surprises

Download the PDF here!

We are almost through Q2 for 2019 and we can tell you that there is a definite trend afoot in the real estate industry. In the last six months, we’ve seen a surge in “system selection” projects. These are not small ancillary system projects, these are ERP projects all across the industry – including land developers, home builders and property/asset management companies.

Why this sudden movement? If you’ve been around as long as the Cornerstone team, you can recall how Y2K forced so many of us to upgrade our back-office systems. For many companies, that was the last time they took a hard look at the future of their systems. Folks, that was 19 years ago. To be fair, some companies did make changes in the last ten years, but that window is also aging out.

None of us want to upgrade or change systems. Yet, technology is moving so fast that many of those aging systems are leaving us. For example, if you are on SAP you will soon need to move to their new platform SAP S4/HANA. That will mean almost a full re-implementation for you. If you find yourself in that situation, facing full implementation costs and changes, it is incumbent on you to do your due diligence and include a comparison of alternative solutions in your analysis.

Many other real estate products have been on minimal support and don’t seem to be upgrading; some products have only one or two sources left supporting them. If this is the case with your system, you really need to look forward. Yep, pull your head out of the sand. Or, if you feel you are already above the ground, look around you…are you painting the organization in a corner because you’re waiting to address what you already know is coming?

Some of the products that we see as the “senior” of the “senior citizens” include not only the old SAP, but JDE One World, FAST, Trueline, a version of Builder MT and more. These products have served us well, but if your organization is counting on them, you need to take a serious look at “how much longer?” Not only are you missing out on new technology, features, and tools, but eventually something is going to give. For example, if you are on a product utilizing the AS400 and the hardware goes down, you will need to upgrade to expensive new hardware just to be able to hold on until you can complete a new system selection and implementation.

Don’t drag your company down into defensive mode, go beyond offensive mode and move into pro-active mode. Ask yourself the hard questions and start prepping your management and co-workers for change. Get on the next budget cycle early and make a solid case for necessary expenditures. Assemble teams and include a wide range of departments to build requirements, foster buy in, and ensure your selection is the best one for your entire company. And feel free to give us a call for help; as Cornerstone has done many, many of these projects (= we have the templates!)

Tis the Season of Spring Cleaning! While washing your car and scrubbing the window sills, be sure to include your SQL Server environment in your whirlwind of activity. Yes, much like the base boards, your SQL Server environment needs a little extra ‘maintenance’ attention now again.

Upgrade

Upgrading seems obvious, but we see a significant number of SQL Server installations running on the 2008 and 2012 versions. These SQL Server versions were all reasonably solid, so the “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality has created a lag behind. Upgrades do more than solve problems however – they also provide new functionality and address issues that exist, but my not be obvious. Additionally, support for SQL Server 2008 R2 ends July 9, 2019, and SQL Server 2012 is scheduled to reach the end of its lifecycle in only three years. This may seem like a lot of time, but depending upon your other projects and your environment, 36 months can come around quickly. If you are on a SQL Server version below SQL Server 106, we recommend you upgrade to SQL Server 2017. Please review the Supported Version and Edition Upgrades for SQL Server 2017 and the Upgrade to SQL 2017 articles, published by Microsoft, to plan and execute your upgrade.

Since many of our clients leverage SQL Server Reporting Services, we wanted to highlight two items specific to this feature. First, the look and feel of Reporting Services changed significantly in SQL Server 2016, along with adding some long-awaited functionality, such as the ability to control parameter layout, mobile reports, and KPIs in the SSRS Web Portal. Second, the Reporting Services installation is now a separate download and install, rather than a feature component of the SQL Server installation.

Evaluate Licensing

SQL Server 2017 Standard Edition can be licensed on a Server + CAL or a Per Core basis. Your Edition and current license agreement will impact your options. Take a moment to touch base with your Microsoft Software Licensing Provider for a period review of your licensing costs.

Perform an Access Review

Databases move, turnover occurs, leaving orphaned users and old windows accounts straggling as a result. Take a moment to run the sp_validateusers stored procedure to identify an Windows accounts that need attention. SQL orphaned users take a bit more research: the MSSQL Tips article, Different Ways to Find SQL Server Orphaned Users, defines scripts for locating and addressing these.

Review the Basics

The turn of the seasons is a good way to schedule a review of your database health, which should be performed multiple times a year. Review your indexes for fragmentation, your databases for overgrown log files or outdated backups. Schedule and perform a “test drive” of a database restore. It is better to identify problems during a test drive than find out your backups are no good in the middle of a real-life issue. Check your SQL Agent Jobs to make sure they are working as desired and retire any jobs that are no longer needed. Evaluate your Reporting Services Subscriptions and confirm their distribution list is current. Confirm your SQL Server Maintenance Plans are performing tasks against all appropriate databases.

Touch Base with Your Team

Ask the users of the applications that depend upon SQL Server how those applications are performing. Users are the eyes and ears of your back-office system performance, so reach out and solicit their feedback. Team members are often the first to feel the impact of a missing or fragmented index or suffer the delays of a poorly written query. While the performance issue may not be something that can be resolved immediately, often times it can be resolved in time or mitigated. Healthy environments make happy users!

The 2019 Housing Awards are in at the American Institute of Architects website. Click here to see all the winners and determine if you could live in any of them!

Leasing guidance before the issuance of ASU 2016-02 required lessees to classify leases as either capital or operating leases. Lessees recognized assets and obligations related to capital leases; expenses associated with capital leases were recognized by amortizing the leased asset and recognizing interest expense on the lease obligation. Many lease arrangements were classified as operating leases, under which lessees would not recognize lease assets or liabilities on their balance sheet, but rather would recognize lease payments as expense on a straight line basis over the lease term.

The IASB decided that lessees should apply a single model to all leases, which is reflected in IFRS 16, Leases, released in January 2016. The FASB decided that lessees should apply a dual model. Under the FASB model, lessees will classify a lease as either a finance lease or an operating lease, while a lessor will classify a lease as either a sales-type, direct financing, or operating lease.

Click here to read the article: How Changing Accounting Standards Will Impact Property Managers

Download the guide from PWC (including the differences between ASC 842 and IFRS 16)

Nowadays there are a lot of houses for rent on the market. This is definitely a trend that is here to stay and can be beneficial for both landlord and tenant. However, unlike apartment buildings and complexes, rental houses may not be managed by a property manager.

Rental properties that are not managed by professionals are much more likely to be the target of rental scams. Here are some precautions that every potential renter should take, for every rental property they are thinking about renting:

• The website where you find the property should have multiple photos, inside and outside. Inquire about the property and ask about something you can’t see in one of the photos.

• The website where you find the property should have details about all the amenities. Look at the list and make sure the attractions mentioned are actually nearby – within walking distance if that’s what they say they are.

• The webiste should have an exact address, not just an area circled on a map. Move on to another property if you can’t get the exact house address.

• You should be able to set up an appointment for a walkthrough. Do not sign anything or make any payments until after the walkthrough.

• You should be asked to provide information about yourself to be screened as a potential tenant. If you are not asked for your information at all or if you are asked for your information prior to a requested walkthrough, move on to another property.

• You should be asked to sign a lease, but you should not be asked to sign or pay anything before seeing the property. If any kind of payment is requested before you have signed a lease and received keys (that actually open a door to the property) move on to another property.

• Pay attention to the following warning signs: if the person asking for the intial rent or a deposit is out of the state or country; if the rent requested is too cheap for the area where the property is located; and/or if you are asked to wire a deposit or rental amount. These are all potential signs that the person asking for money does not own or manage the property.

• Don’t be pressured. Scammers favorite tool is to try to make you act without thinking something through. Whether there is a time limit or not, you should thoroughly research the property – and if you don’t have time, move on to something else.

• Know the owner – check real estate, property management, and tax assessor’s records to make sure that the person you are dealing with is the legitimate owner of the property.

Finally, if at any time during the process you feel uneasy or doubt what you are being told is true, move on. There are a lot of scammers pretending to be owners as soon as a house is placed on the market because more often than not, they get away with it! If no one was fooled, the number of scammers would drop significantly. Don’t be a statistic.