The latest webinar in IREM’s ACCELERATOR series, What Demanding Clients Want from Their Third Party Property Managers, highlighted the skills and behaviors needed to not just survive, but thrive, in the competitive property management industry.
Real estate investors have become more sophisticated over time and correspondingly demand more sophisticated property managers. Collecting the rent, paying the bills, maintaining the asset, and keeping the tenants happy simply isn't enough anymore. And webinar host Dustin Read, PhD/JD, Virginia Tech Assistant Professor of Property Management, hopes that property managers will start to view these activities as the floor rather than the ceiling.
Property managers looking to advance their careers must be critical of their own work to go from good to great, and drive value for their client.Property managers must view core property management competencies such as budgeting, tenant relations, and oversight of maintenance programs as just the starting point in satisfying the demands of sophisticated clients.
best-in-class property managers are dutifully executing all of these tasks, while also analyzing market conditions, demonstrating a thorough understanding of ownership's investment goals, a willingness to proactively seek out creative solutions to challenging problems, and the ability to provide both actionable market intelligence and value-neutral analysis. Anything that ownership can use to create value.”
All of these tasks must be completed in recognition of the fact that even in the presence of scarce resources and daunting tenant demands, there are always opportunities to increase a property's cash flows or enhance its resiliency to economic volatility. Property managers that approach their work in this way establish themselves as key players in the value creation process that frequently have a seat at the table when important investment decisions are made.
The most effective working relationships exist when both asset managers and property managers have a great appreciation for the challenges involved in day-to-day operations and an understanding that market conditions often affect the financial performance of income-producing properties more than any other variable.
To learn more, access Read’s webinar On-Demand.