Fast times in Slow Real Estate
While the real estate market is slow in terms of a properties life cycle, it has daily urgencies that need to be dealt with. These can be one-off projects for renovations that need to be completed to key milestones, for emergency maintenance and daily office work; vacancy management, payrolls, billing and administration.
As with all sectors, automation through system integration for management systems has increased in popularity to deal with some of this. However, YOU will need to upskill to accommodate them and stay up-to-date with whatever novel systems contractors and tenants wish to use.
Now, if you read all this, it seems amorphic and in constant flux. However, there are things you can do to manage yourself and keep control.
Habits to keep you moving forward
Property management first starts with YOU, not your tenant, owner or your friend’s neighbour’s cat. If you can control yourself and how you operate, the rest will fall in place like a giant jigsaw puzzle. So where to start?
Early Bird gets the Worm
Planning your day from the start is important. It provides you with a goal to achieve each day on your long-term campaign as a property manager. Ideally, work in 30-minute time segments and use a mobile device that synchronises all your calendars on every device. If you have others in your team, ensure they can access this too; it will keep you honest and reachable at the same time.
Positivity
Property management can make you feel peaks higher than Everest and lows deeper than an empty ice cream Sundae glass. So, your attitude is crucial in making you or breaking you. Mental positivity helps with managing stress while improving your health. If you start muttering to yourself or writing in a negative light, actively catch yourself by thinking of whether your glass is half full or half empty. Calm yourself and take things objectively, one step at a time.
Procrastination
If you wait to do something, there are some stressors on you. First, you will think more about that activity needing to be done than the time it may take to do it; wasting everybody’s time, including your valuable time. You will anger people that need you to do something and cause you emotional stress. While you are procrastinating, your other jobs may build up and you will feel like a bad Tetris player. Instead, be proactive, always be ‘on the front foot,’ a stitch in time saves nine.
Stay Tuned
The property management domain is constantly evolving, with new technologies being introduced quicker than you can imagine. From cloud-based rental property management systems to virtual showings from the comfort of the viewer’s home. If you don’t know the ‘state-of-the-art’ you don’t know what you are competing against or what you can wield to your advantage.
While we have mentioned technology here, the same ‘ear to the ground’ applies to all business practices. In general, search actively for automation and integration to save you and your team’s time, but make sure it covers all your needs.
See Opportunities in Challenges
Hurdles bring opportunities and success that you may not originally see. A proactive attitude can help immensely in the property management world; learn to turn your competitor’s failings into your opportunities.
Learn from Mistakes
In life, there are always measures of success and failure; with failure, it is usually due to a mistake. Mistakes are where there was an unfounded assumption that was made. However, don’t tie emotion to it, these things no matter how big or small happen due to human error; it just means you’re alive. Instead, just learn from mistakes and do better next time. While the ‘never make the same mistake twice’ is useful for helping you remember, don’t be too hard on yourself. Worrying is like a rocking chair; it gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere!’
Time Management
Effective time management skills are a necessity in life. Ideally, focus on the largest rocks and build your schedule around them, filling in spaces with smaller and smaller tasks. By doing so you will follow the Power Law 80%:20% rule and ensure that you are not circumvented by low priority action items or spending the majority of your time on them.
Clean Organization
Make your working environment clean of repetitive or old information. Some people believe in a paperless office to help achieve this and by proxy help reduce the trees cut down; but whatever works well for you. If you have a stack of papers unorganized on your desk, it usually means while you are busy, you are not an efficient worker. Use technology and automation to get rid of that paperwork. If there are workflows where there are times when people are standing around randomly throughout the day, change the workflow to increase efficiency. Conduct ‘time and motion’ studies covertly to see where you can recoup team time. Never blame anyone for wasting time. It was your system they were following.
Regarding tenants, it is easier than ever to find good people to use it to make sure you don’t get the bad type that drains other people’s motivation.
Always document any interaction with tenants, such as disputes and maintenance issues. If it is centralized on a cloud-based system, all of your team can follow the talk-track and action independently; transparency aids productivity and stops individuals from being bottlenecks or ‘irreplaceable’. Always ensure documentation exists for every process and piece of critical knowledge. If necessary, ask staff to make “how to” videos for new members of staff to cover your operation.
A great system that is transparent and independent will improve productivity no end.
Goal Orientation
Always have a set of long, medium and short-term goals in mind. Goals are always linked to objectives; how you are going to get to your goal. Once you have the goal and objectives, essentially you have the makings of a time plan or Gantt chart that you can design, printout, and put on a wall as a reminder every day. As you can see, your progress in context it will help you in your venture.
You can also take this further and start planning out what to do about potential risks to the ‘project’; this goes back to the proactive approach.
Communication
There are two types of communication you will do professionally. The first is internal communication with your team and contractors, the other is external to your tenants and owners. No matter what the situation, you must adopt the no procrastination policy here. Never postpone a conversation as it will kill your credibility as a Property Manager. What do I mean by this? Credibility is what everyone buys into when dealing with another person or company. It is your brand and the company’s brand. If you tarnish it by allowing people to see your weaknesses, you will ‘lose cabin pressure’, be second-guessed or circumvented. This does not mean acting like you have all the answers, but being straightforward with people and telling them you will get back to them. Always be transparent; honesty is the best policy.
If you integrate all of these key points into you and your team, you will be almost indestructible from the outset.
Additional Characteristics of an Awesome Property Manager
Experience
What is your experience of property management, how many have you managed before? Have you ever turned around troubled properties before? You will need to have a thorough knowledge of real estate laws where you operate, standard operating procedures, and regulations. If you develop yourself in the areas that you are missing, your work will become enriched as a result; and make your daily life far easier. To do this, practically try attending real estate associations; these will not only provide you with valuable connections but impart knowledge through seminars.
Think about your strengths now in terms of experience, recognise what you’re missing, and start self-educating yourself to reduce the risk of not knowing something obvious. Do night or weekend courses or online courses to fill in the gaps. Perhaps see if you can go and work for a property management firm and make notes about what they do. It could be a quick way to get your feet web before potentially diving off at the deep end. For those professionals already in the field, expand your network and exchange information about the current climate and daily challenges; you will learn from one another. This is where being a member of a real estate association pays off; if you think you know everything, you are going backwards – continual improvement is the key to success!
The Mindset of an Investor
As a property manager, you need to take care of a property as if it were your own. This is because it is this property that provides a living to you; if you fail to do this, you will lose not just the current investor but others who hear of your bad management practices. In addition to this, you must be able to do the calculations that investors do because each property goes through a life cycle of purchase, rent and sale which impacts your cash flow. A person who cannot think like an investor is not an automatic disqualification for the role of a property manager; however, there should be a willingness to self-study. A person that can think like an investor can be proactive and not always on the back foot with the investor; retaining your credibility during daily operations.
Assertiveness, Patience & Professionalism
You need to find the biting point of when to be upfront and have a ‘big talk’ compared to relaxing in the tall grass. If you fail in your diplomacy, you will make things a thousand times worse.
Always remember that every conversation is about agreements. Take the stance of kind but firm, you have to do your job; you are not a friend to flex on rent or fees, but that does not mean that you cannot be kind, especially when dealing with sensitive business matters.
In addition to conversations, remember you are a professional and must dress as your profession abides.
Flexibility & Ingenuity
Things go wrong all the time; this is the nature of complexity and assuming it isn’t because of laziness is something that can be empathized with by others. Sometimes, tenants stop paying rent, gardeners forget a contracted job, or a pipe bursts in a meeting room. Yet most things are excusable if you tell people as soon as you know something is off the rails.
The reality is that you might have to get creative to get things done. No meeting room, rearrange to a nearby coffee shop. Can’t get to a meeting on time, reschedule as soon as you know, irrespective of being potentially only 15 minutes late. In addition to all this, how do you respond to change? Do you get agitated, lack understanding of the situation, or just angry? This is usually because you don’t have a Plan B under your hat. Create what-if scenarios, like what happens if the internet doesn’t work in an investor meeting, have you at least one alternative? If you do, you will never be flustered and happy to show others your creativity while smiling.
In summary, in case you tried speed reading this and failed catastrophically, it is YOU that needs to stay in control as you are the manager. Use the tips and tricks above to help you and never underestimate the power of ‘what if’ scenarios aiding your ‘Plan B’ and thus your control of the situation. Also, manage the expectation of others if something goes wrong and never delay in telling anyone.