We tirelessly utilize the word partner in our business relationships. Why not? After all, is that not why we are here; to function as your business partner? As we begin initial communications with a prospective client, we always value and appreciate the prospect using this same type of language. That truly means the prospect "gets it", and they are looking for the same things we are looking for in our business relationships.
Throughout the years, we have come up with a top 5 ways your property manager should be functioning as a partner to you. There are many areas in which this partnership are vital, but these, we sincerely believe, are the most pertinent. In fact, through frequent surveys with our clients, they have continuously identified these 5 out of list of over 25 items which are the most important to them. This top 5 is as follows.
1 Active Eyes & Ears for the Client & Asset. For the first seven years of our business operation, 98.7% of our clients resident in a state different from where their property was located. There was a paramount need for their management and service partner to function as their eyes and ears. Many years later, and with our continued saturation of our markets, that number is down to 92.5% of our clients residing in states outside of that which their assets are located. However, the simple fact remains that when surveyed, our clients continuously maintain this to be the most important function of our partnership. We have clients we have never had the pleasure of meeting in person, due to their distance to their asset, and some that we only meet via virtual meetings. These folks must depend on their property manager partner to keep a sharp eye out on their real estate investments.
How do we accomplish the above, where others simply fail at this all-important endeavor? By performing routine and on-going property inspections, AND by sharing the results of the inspections with the client. If your property manager is only contacting you when there is an issue, you have an issue with the proactivity of your property manager, and there needs to exist more frequent communications, which will always result when your partner is truly functioning as your eyes and ears.
2 Functioning as a Market Research Expert. About two months ago, we received a telephone call from a large group of commercial property inspectors. They currently only own property in the Northeast, but are seeking to purchase various properties in the Southeast, and especially in upstate South Carolina, and the Charlotte area of North Carolina. Their first set of questions to us were as follows, "Do you know the current price per square footage lease rates for similar properties in this area, "Do you have prospects currently seeking these types of commercial lease spaces, and "Can you oversee newly acquired properties in excess of 450,000 square feet, and fill them with great tenants with relative quickness?" Our answers; Yes, yes, and YES!
This illustration above shows that we are actively engaged in our markets, and know the X's and O's of these markets. After all, that is what our clients are looking for; the immediate knowledge of the questions they have. They are the investors, and they have done their homework, know what they seek, and where they seek it. They simply need someone to manage the assets for them.
This concept may be as simple as your property manager partner staying abreast on the median lease amount for a specific area for a two bedroom apartment, three bedroom home, or other price point. If your partner is not constantly researching the changes to the business landscape (it changes rapidly), how may your partner maximize the ROI on your asset?
3 Initiating Communications With the Client. In September, 2022, after the busy summer season, we emailed a comprehensive survey to our existing vacation rental clients. For a 15 question client satisfaction survey, our first question was for the client to rate our level of proactive communications, on a scale of 1 - 10. For clarity, instances where we initiated the communication, not responding to the clients initial communication. Our the surveys we received back, 96.98% of the respondents rated us at 9 or 10 on a scale of 1 - 10, with 10 being superior.
In addition, in a similar survey sent to those who had made website, email and telephone inquires to us in 2021, we sent a similar survey, with 6 questions, measuring their satisfaction levels of their existing property managers (for those who had property managers). We were pleasantly surprised to receive a high response rate from the survey, and were even able to sign three new clients, who had once reached out to us. Coming as no surprise, 86.45% of those responding stated that there were thoroughly dissatisfied with the amount of communications they received from their property manager. This is constantly a number one reason we sign new clients from existing property managers.
4 Lack of Sense of Urgency in Responding to Client's Inquiries. A prevalent issue in property management, companies simply become too large, and lose their ability administratively to properly respond to their client's questions, suggestions, and issues. This issue is especially prevalent in vacation rentals, long-term rentals, and multifamily operations.
Where there are numerous reasons why these issues exist, your property manager should aggressively respond to your inquiries. In our opinion, an aggressive response rate should never exceed 24 hours. Unless the question is highly complex, and requires a great amount of research, 24 hours is ample time to reply to the client. Also, in these rare cases, the proactive property manager partner should immediately respond that they have received the inquiry, and will respond with a full and complete answer in a specified amount of time.
5 Ongoing, Repeated, and Uncorrected Issues With Administrative & Administrative Functions. We refer to these areas as "Back of the House Functions", and they are unfortunately commonplace in the property management industry.
As with number 4 above, the reasons for these types of issues, generally related to financial errors, and administrative functions are widespread. Among the top reasons are the organization is too large for the financial and administrative employees to property handle the volume of work, especially the critical end of month functions they face. It is critical that the monthly statements, generally accessible through the owner's portal, lessee portal, email, or some type of shared data portal be prompt, precise, and error free. In most cases, these types of errors are the result of someone working in an accounting function who is preparing the information, with no system of checks and balances. Regardless, as stated, this is a constant source of complaints among asset owners, and one in which a great property manager partner will not generally have as an issue.
With our operation, we utilize Buildium, as our software partner, and they are magnificent. Many of our clients, who own multiple assets utilize them as their software providers as well. Regardless of the software system your property manager utilizes, remember the old saying, "bad data in, bad data out." If the data being inputted is correct, the output will be correct as well. In any case, their must be systems of checks and balances from your property management partner.
We hope you have enjoyed this Top 5, in a continuation of our "Tops" lists. We continue to receive requests for Tops lists, and we sincerely appreciate and value your questions, suggestions and input. If you would like to see any particular topic in the future, please hit and us and let us hear from you. If we can be of any assistance to you, please do not hesitate to check us out online at www.integritymgmtsystems.com, or call us at (888) 810-9184. Thanks for reading!
Comentários