Holiday shopping brings package headaches for apartment landlords

package gift holiday The holidays are almost here.

And they bring big headaches for apartment owners who must deal with thousands and thousands of packages showing up on their properties’ doorsteps.

That’s right, all that stuff you order from Amazon and other Internet retailers over the next couple of months will be piling up in your apartment community’s management office.

Last year, delivery firms dumped off more than $300 billion in Internet purchases.

Forecasts say that online retail sales will jump by almost 60 percent in the next two or three years.

Apartment landlords know this trend all too well.

“It’s a challenge in December when FedEx and UPS are delivering,” said Jim McGinley, senior vice president of the apartment investor Monogram Residential Trust. “These are actually truckloads of packages coming in every day.”

Monogram Residential is adding large package holding rooms to its developments and putting systems in place to deal with the flood of mailed merchandise, McGinley told execs this week at a Dallas apartment industry seminar.

“Some of the large managers and owners have been stopping packages and adding weight limits,” he said. “We are actually going into the other direction.”

Earlier this year, one of Texas’ largest apartment owners and developers stopped accepting packages for its residents nationwide.

Camden Property Trust told its renters it could no longer be responsible for taking in the mounds of stuff they order online.

The apartment company has said its leasing offices handled more than 1 million packages for its residents last year.

Camden said the manpower to deal with all those packages costs it millions a year.

Some apartment owners are using new locker systems and email notification services to deal with the delivery problem.

With most home deliveries coming while residents are at work, most landlords say it isn’t realistic to turn away packages.

“We can’t totally get away from it,” said Adam Brown of the developer Trinsic Residential Group. “It’s a big deal.”

Brown said his firm is putting in systems that allow residents to get their goods after the leasing office closes for the day.

“When people get home at midnight they want their package.”

Source: dallasnews.com