“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. Not to mention, we wouldn’t have the system to leverage them without a Parkade.”

To see if this is the case, check out our interactive infographic to see if your problems align with what we help our customers solve every day in their lots.

Taylor, the property manager at Strata and Venue, shared her experience of desperately needing more guest parking and discovering they had a full 50 more open spots than they thought.Â

Perpendicularparking

For apartment complexes in particular, parking obviously continues to have an impact after a resident makes the decision to sign a lease. And spots that are the right size can shield your residents from potential negative experiences like damage to their cars, difficulty navigating the parking lot, and frustration with other residents parking cars outside the lines.Â

But we know you want the hard dollar amounts, so let’s talk more about some real-world outcomes that Parkade's parking management software delivers.Â

With parking being one of the largest drivers of ancillary revenue at multi-family properties, it's imperative to get it right. But just how much return can you expect from parking management software? Read on to find out.

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While parking may not seem like it deserves to be the biggest priority for many properties, the numbers tell a different story. By investing in a proper parking solution, properties are able to significantly improve upon all of their business goals, whether it’s boosting revenue, streamlining operations, improving resident experience, or all of the above.Â

Especially given that the baseline forecast for rent growth is slightly lower this year than average (2.5% versus 2.9%), properties are increasingly looking for ways to raise their bottom line without compromising the quality of living for their residents.Â

Reverse angleparking

In this guide, we will explore those benefits, touching on both the financial and operational upside of a solid parking management strategy.

Parkade is the #1 parking management software for multi-family buildings. With our resident-facing app and staff dashboard, parking runs itself. Your team will boost revenue, reduce time spent on parking, and improve experience for residents and guests, all without lifting a finger.

Angled parking is typically most suitable for lots where you can reliably enforce one-way traffic flow, since the angle of spots should align with the flow of traffic.Â

Closely aligned to the topic of parking space dimensions is the consideration of painting the actual lines. There are several different paint options for your parking lot:

30 degreeangled parkingdimensions

On average, properties from the cohort we sampled estimated that they would bring in $15,925 on average from long-term parking revenue per month. But thanks to Parkade helping them optimize their parking strategy, better enforce their parking rules, and keep a better record of who is parking where, the average revenue from long-term parking was $23,450 on average, which is a 47.3% increase from the estimates in their pro forma.Â

If you are managing an already-built property, you may have already noticed that you’re having problems with large cars parking over the lines or hitting other cars. Or maybe you’ve noticed that you have lots of small cars that could easily fit in compact spots. This can inform your decision to re-strategize your parking and restripe your lot.

Parking management software can automate away a lot of the most tedious aspects. For example, Parkade gives residents self-service access to reserve and pay for parking (while allowing for any rule sets the property wants to enforce), provides hands-off enforcement support, and even automates gate access via the app so that teams don’t have to worry about distributing or replacing clickers.Â

Getting a gauge on this beforehand can help you anticipate needs and determine the best mix of compact, regular, and oversized spots.Â

Especially in popular areas, like city centers or near shopping malls and sporting arenas, there’s often a high demand for short-term parking. When properties put a system in place to monetize this guest parking, they can unlock hundreds or even thousands of extra dollars per month.Â

This is the most affordable and eco-friendly option. It’s also quicker to apply. However, this comes at a cost since it doesn’t stand up to the harsh elements very well. If your property is in an area that frequently has rain or snow, this may not be the best option. The benefits can quickly be canceled out by a need to constantly touch the paint up.Â

75 degree angle spots are the closest you can be to perpendicular spots without actually being straight. They save a little more space than perpendicular parking, but out of the angled parking options, they are the most difficult to maneuver, so they’re not that popular at residential properties. Instead, they are more common in places where people will have more patience with tight maneuvers, like urban centers or professional environments.Â

One of our customers with an apartment building in a popular downtown LA neighborhood came to us with a parking shortage, thinking they didn't have enough space to accommodate the growing number of residents and guests at their community.Â

Angled parking is a great way to fit more spaces into tighter confines because of the reduced space needed for turning. Whereas with perpendicular, or straight parking, it requires a larger turning aisle for maneuvering into the spot.Â

Angled parkingdimensions

For buildings that are already at full occupancy, the average increase in parking revenue sits at 31% once they implement Parkade’s parking management solution.Â

For your standard parking space, meant to accommodate “average” sized cars like sedans, crossovers and minivans, the most common dimensions in the U.S. are 8’6” by 18’. Some cities have minimums for standard spaces, so check your local regulations.

You’ll also need to include handicap parking spaces in your lot. Per the ADA guidelines, one of every 25 conventional spaces need to be handicap accessible. And one of every 6 of the accessible spots needs to be van accessible.Â

Delivering on resident expectations should be a main priority for any multifamily property, and parking is one area of the resident experience that is especially critical to consider here.Â

Simply by switching to Parkade, they were able to boost their capacity by 27% — the always-accurate parking records made the biggest dent in the problem, with the parking log audit revealing 18 spots that were incorrectly assigned and could be put to use. Another 8 spots were made available from subleasing by traveling residents, or residents who used to rent long-term, opting to just rent short-term when needed instead.

Consider your parking lot: the starting point for the overall tenant or patron experience at your business or residential community. A key part of creating the best parking lot or garage possible is choosing the right dimensions for each spot.Â

Now that you understand the importance and impact of proper planning, let’s get into all the different sizes of parking spaces available to your lot.

Whatever option you choose, you want to make sure you consistently maintain it to avoid the issues of faded spot lines, including damage to your pavement because of frequent sudden stopping, people parking in the wrong spots, and collisions.Â

At the Parkade properties we surveyed, teams saw anywhere from a $66,000 to $126,000 improvement to their net operating income from parking alone.Â

Perhaps after reading this, you’ve realized that your spot sizes aren’t the problem, or at least changing your spot size won’t lead you to the results you really need. You may have discovered that you simply need to better manage your existing spots.Â

For standard parallel parking spaces, common dimensions are 8’6” by 23’. The 23’ length includes 19’ for the spot itself and 4’ of safety space.Â

When properties have a great system to implement paid guest parking, without putting too much strain on their staff, they immediately see a boost in revenue.

While single-family homeowners latched onto the appeal of listing their property as a short-term rental long ago, the trend is just beginning to pick up some steam in the multi-family industry.

When your parking management system gives you an accurate, real-time view of available spots, you can leverage guest parking to its full capacity.

If you live in a climate with a lot of cold winters, oil-based paint is probably the best option. It’s a bit more affordable than thermoplastic paint, but still delivers durability, at least when it comes to withstanding freezing temperatures. It’s not eco-friendly like water-based paint, but given its long life span, this may end up being less relevant.Â

Parking at multi-family communities is becoming a growing challenge, especially in urban areas. But what are the main drivers of this issue? Read on to find out.

If you’re building a parking lot from scratch, you may want to consider doing some type of research into the types of cars your tenants or patrons are likely to have. Some of this can be done by surveying the communities around you and seeing the types of vehicles you see. Typically, rural areas are more likely to have larger trucks and SUVs, while urban areas are more likely to have more compact cars.

When you’re in the midst of a parking shortage, fielding complaints from residents or patrons every day about being unable to find a spot, it’s enticing to shave a few inches off of each spot to squeeze in a few more.Â

Since easy parking is one of the deciding factors for renters on where to live, your strategy here is important in the lease-up phase and beyond to get — and keep — your units full.Â

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In many cases, it’s a good idea to find a good mix of different types of spots—straight, angled, and maybe a few tandem spots at a big discount—to suit your space needs without sacrificing your resident experience or adding unnecessary operational complications.Â

With rising costs in the industry, it’s becoming increasingly important to find ways to cut down on expenses. Check out these tips from our experts.

When handled manually, parking management can steal hours from on-site property management teams every week. Between fielding requests or complaints from residents, tracking down parking records, walking the lot to enforce rules, handling guest parking, and manually inputting rentable items, parking can quickly balloon into one of the most time-consuming tasks for staff.

60 degree angle spots are usually the most popular option, balancing space efficiency and ease of use with a comfortably-sized aisle of 20 feet (on average) for one-way traffic. Less driving aisle width is needed than 90 degree parking, but a little more is required compared to 45 degree angles. This is a good option for mid-sized lots.

Want to hear an entertaining but cautionary tale of a San Francisco resident living at a complex where they didn’t do the right planning?

If you’re a residential property manager, you can also send surveys to your residents and ask them directly if they would prefer any additional spot sizes, as well as their willingness to pay more or desire to pay less. If you build more compact spots, you have an opportunity to squeeze in more spots when you’re tight on space or experiencing a parking shortage. And if you need to create more oversized spots, you can look into boosting your revenue by charging more for premium-priced spots.Â

When a few properties we worked with during this phase were estimating parking revenue at the start of their lease-up, they estimated around $35,000 on average. But the results, since they decided to go with Parkade right from the start, blew those numbers out of the water. In reality, they were able to bring in closer to $58,000 on average, which is a 66% increase from the estimates.

The best time to implement new parking management systems is at the inception of the building. Getting parking right from the beginning ensures that you are maximizing total parking revenue from day one, as well as establishing a positive reputation around parking. Many properties underestimate the revenue from long-term parking and may often leave out potential short-term parking revenue altogether.Â

On average, we’ve seen properties decrease their operational expenses by $60,000-$100,000 from savings on parking operations alone. This means that they were able to save what’s equal to a full-time employee’s salary.Â

Whether you’re working within the confines of your existing lot or looking to plan your lot the right way from the beginning, there are several strategies to make the most of the space.Â

Once properties implement a system to help them optimize pricing and management of long-term parking, they see immediate gains in their long-term parking revenue. The average 6-month increase in net long-term parking revenue for the cohort of 7 properties we sampled was 24%, translating into thousands of extra dollars.Â

65% of property managers cite parking as a top concern among residents. Whether it’s for existing residents or prospective residents, providing a simple, reliable, and flexible parking solution has a direct impact on the success of your property.Â

Without a good system in place to manage parking, many properties often leave guest parking as a free-for-all (meaning they don’t make money from it), or if they do attempt to monetize guest parking, it turns into a massive beast to handle.Â

The boost in revenue continues to be apparent when you zoom out to look at short-term parking, too. Short-term guest parking can be one of the most underutilized revenue streams, and represents a huge opportunity for multi-family properties to tap into. However, it's historically been very difficult or impossible for properties to see this revenue without parking management software that automates the process.

For angled parking spots, which is a space-saving strategy we’ll talk about a little later, the dimensions of the spots themselves remain the same, the only difference is the space needed for traffic flow.

As a developer, checking these boxes is likely already a part of your building process. But if you’re a property manager looking to re-stripe your lot, you’ll want to get local planning authorities involved to ensure that the changes you want to make are up to code.Â

Before we dive into the numbers, let’s first establish a baseline of what exactly parking management entails. As any property manager will tell you, it involves much more than just hanging a tag on a resident’s car and calling it a day.

But making spots too small can end up causing more headaches than it’s worth. People are just as likely to complain about dings to their car or their spot neighbor parking over the line into their spot as they are about not finding parking.Â

Part of this is due to reputation. Properties have reported a 44% increase in their reputation scores after fixing their parking problems. And this boost in a reputation score can trickle into several different areas, boosting not only the number of new residents, but also leading to more renewals from existing residents.

For car accessible spaces, they must be at least 96” wide with a marked access aisle that’s at least 60” wide. It’s important to note that two handicap spaces next to each other can share a single 60” access aisle between them.Â

The better solution is to instead better manage the spots you already have. Unbundling parking from rent and finding the right pricing strategy can go a long way in managing demand, and using the right parking management tool will help you keep an up-to-date record of who’s allowed to park where and reliably enforce your parking standards, cutting down on unauthorized parking that’s eating into your valuable spaces.Â

Better parking management also empowers properties to far outperform their projected revenue from long-term parking when they’re in the lease-up phase.Â

Another way that manual parking management may stand in the way of effectively monetizing guest parking is the inability to accurately track how many spots you have available for guests to reserve in the first place.Â

And far too often, properties are relying too heavily on staff members to handle parking matters that take up a significant amount of time, like enforcement or guest parking.

45 degree angle spots are best for higher-density areas since it can accommodate more spaces per square footage than any other angle. They are also the easiest to maneuver into, requiring less space for a turning aisle, only 14 feet on average in the U.S.

Your parking lot is typically part of a patron or resident’s first impression of your business or community. You don’t want people to drive up and see cramped spaces, misparked cars, and fender benders in progress.

For all of these spots, they must be clearly marked with the right striping and signage, designating them as accessible and van accessible spots. For full guidelines on signage requirements and other details, visit the ADA.gov information page.

For van accessible spaces, you have two options. You can have a spot that is 132” inches (11 feet) with an access aisle that’s at least 60” wide, or you can have a spot that’s 96” wide with an access aisle that’s 96” wide.Â

We’ve combed the data from all of our clients to identify the exact numbers to prove that there truly is ROI in parking management systems like Parkade.Â

Before we talk about actual dimensions, we first want to clarify why they matter. You may think that a parking lot is just a parking lot, and as long as you can fit in all the spots you need, you’re okay.

Whether teams are looking to calculate their property value, secure financing, make operational decisions, or pitch to investors, NOI is one of the most critical numbers to boost.Â

60 degreeangled parkingdimensions

On average, Parkade customers experience a 303% increase in their guest parking revenue after Parkade fees. And there were some properties that saw almost a 400% increase.

If you’re really tight on space and in a pinch, tandem spots could be a space-saving option. However, these are a major pain for residents, so it should only be used as a last resort.Â

Whether you’re a developer strategizing your parking scheme for the first time, a building owner looking to overhaul your existing parking spaces, or a property manager striping your lot for a lease-up, it’s crucial to get it right.Â

For smaller cars, like coupes, smart cars and fiats, compact spots can help you take advantage of their small size to make extra room in your parking lot.Â

Parking tends to be one of the biggest thorns in the side of a property manager. Because traditional systems — like spreadsheets and rentable items — are not built to handle tenant parking efficiently, teams aren't able to reap the full benefits parking has to offer as an ancillary revenue source. As soon as a team makes the decision to invest in a proper parking management system, the benefits often more than pay for themselves.

“Holy hell I cannot imagine the headache of needing to call someone and wait. But you're also forgetting the other half of this complete nightmare - having to drop everything to go move your car for someone else. Honestly a tandem parking spot sounds worse than prison. Like, it's not something you choose, it's something a witch curses you with.”

This is the most durable option. It contains plastic, which has to be heated and melted down before applying it to your lot. This durability helps it hold up against bad weather, leading to less need for restriping since it lasts a long time. It has a higher price tag and is more time-consuming to apply, but given the reduced need to touch it up, it often ends up balancing out.Â

Level 2 EV charging spaces — i.e. popular charging options that charge cars much faster than when plugging into a regular outlet — are an increasingly popular amenity for apartment complexes to provide. And while the actual parking spot dimensions will not change — you can put a charger at any of the above-mentioned spots without needing different dimensions — but you just need to ensure that there is enough space to fit the charging station without cutting into the dimensions of the space itself.Â

“That sounds like such a nightmare. It’s fine with friends or roommates, but I wouldn’t do it with anyone I couldn’t trust trading key copies with.”

When you roll everything up together — both the increase in revenue (after fees) and the opex savings — investing in parking management software has an incredibly positive impact on annual Net Operating Income (NOI).

Many parking planners like to put these chargers up against walls or sidewalks, or they’ll create a few feet of space between rows of parking.Â

For apartment buildings especially, well-selected parking space dimensions can enhance your property value and the attractiveness of your complex.Â

But with no federally-regulated parking space sizes, dimensions are often left up to local regulation — or not regulated at all. If you live in a city where there is no minimum size required, it’s important to know the most common dimensions so you can make the best decision for your community.Â

Additionally, a well-planned lot with the right mix of spaces is crucial to driving parking revenue at your building. Parking is often overlooked as a revenue stream for multi-family property owners, but it can significantly boost NOI and lift asset value by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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If you have a complicated or inconvenient system for guests to reserve parking, especially one where they have to walk into the office during office hours, guests are often more likely to try to get away with not paying for parking. (And if you don’t have a great system to enforce parking, they may very well get away with it).

The old-school way of addressing these needs isn’t cutting it anymore. Many properties are still using manual processes, like an Excel spreadsheet, rentable items, or even a physical piece of paper to keep track of their parking.Â

One often overlooked but significant opportunity lies in parking. If managed well, it’s a potential treasure trove for additional revenue. But that’s only if it’s done well.Â

There’s a growing trend towards larger vehicles such as SUVs and trucks in the United States. This has led to an increased need for larger spots.Â

A reliable parking-management system also allows you to make the most use of every single spot available. With technology that uses smart inventory management, properties can release idle or unassigned parking spots into the system for short-term use. So spots that would have otherwise been sitting empty between leases can suddenly be leveraged as an extra revenue-generating spot in the meantime.Â

For standard angled spots, you generally must have a minimum of 14’ aisle between spaces for one-way traffic, but this can vary slightly depending on local regulations. And for compact spots, you need to leave 9’10” for one-way traffic.Â

So the parking management we’re discussing here that delivers positive ROI is a technology-led solution that automates all aspects of parking operations, improves resident experience, and unlocks new revenue streams.

They’re able to turn an operation that was perhaps bringing in no money — or some revenue, perhaps at the expense of staff time —  into a significant revenue source with little-to-no staff involvement.Â

Erica, a property manager at Thrive Properties, told us about her pre-Parkade experience with guest parking, preventing them from delivering on a key resident need: “There was no world where we were doing short-term parking by the hour or even by the day because there was just no way to manage that.”

It’s also important to include at least 12 feet of space next to the parallel spot to leave adequate room for traffic flow.Â

Your local zoning laws and building codes can also dictate the minimum parking space dimensions. These can vary from one municipality to another.