What Should Be Property Managers Primary Focus

Greetings Everyone,

I finally got around to reading the June issue of the Real Estate Journal, since I'm always looking to learn something new that is related to the industry that I service, so I can share the information that can be of value to my clients.

And that's when this article caught my attention from Matthew Engel Vice President of the prestigious Langsam Property Management.

 Here is the brief paragraph from the article that I would like to focus on.

"Perhaps the largest portion of our business that often gets overlooked is the most obvious. Taking a proactive role in leasing will most likely have the greatest effect on the bottom line of the properties that we manage. "Duh!" you say, but most management firms often play the "let the tenants come to me" approach and in New York City, with a tight market, in some time periods, that is often enough to get by and keep your building occupied. However, over the past few years, with a weak economy, and even in the current months, with the rental market hot as a stove with fierce competition among tenants to snap up the best apartments, a proactive approach will yield a much greater bottom line".

  I'm including the link to the full article for your benefit so you can read up on the professional advice he has to offer  NYREJ - Property managers need to take a proactive role in leasing, makiwng it one of their priorities

Now let me sum up what I understood from this paragraph, that a lot of managements neglect to focus on the most pressing issue which is their pinnacle of their profit and income making sure that there no vacancies.

Now I can relate to the truth in this statement since I service the property management industry and I’m sometimes surprised at the focus managers have on the minor issue of  spending on basic maintenance supplies.  Even though I had heard from other property managers that the least of the expenses for maintaining a building is the basic monthly maintaining supplies like janitorial plumbing electric etc.

For instance one manager I know divides his supplies between multiple vendors in his urgency to find the cheapest price in town.  Another management I know order in bulk and store the stuff in a stock room not realizing again that they are focusing on the least of their budget expenses.

Even though the basic maintaining of a building is from the least of the expenses, it is of prime importance to keep the building in a clean and up kept condition. And it is in the long run an important aspect what can make the difference in your bottom line, since what tenants and future tenants are concerned about are the condition of the building and how the management address their concerns.

I would like to elaborate a bit on a different angle, how not only by focusing on supplies is the management  focusing on the least of their worries to running an efficient profitable property, but in actuality in the long run  they may not be saving as much as they  imagine.

What is definitely being overlooked is that the expertise and time of the property manager that is being wasted on the minuscule part of the business and besides as the saying goes sometimes cheap is expensive.

Here some pointers that may be helpful to you in your decision how and where to put your focus regarding your maintenance supplies.

1.       Time is money -  instead of wasting on a daily or weekly basis to monitor your supplies pricing there are some vendors out there that offer locked in pricing, meaning that you approve the pricing  once a year and they lock in those pricing for the year so you don’t have to waste time checking pricing.

2.       Time is money - having a vendor that offers next day delivery and has a 99% fill capacity on orders can mean that difference that you can renovate and do the fixing needed without delaying your workers or wasting time sending them out to pick up supplies.

3.       A vendor that can help you monitor what is being spent on each unit and has a system in place that can follow your specific ordering instructions, can mean that you can control exactly how much and who is ordering for the building without wasting time on it personally.

As I mention in the bestselling book I Co- Authored, that being able to take a feature that  a vendor is offering and adapting it to your situation, can sometimes mean a new way of saving money without sacrificing something as precious as your time that can be spent more wisely on the more important aspects of your management.

As always wishing you the best of luck

Pinny

WWW.pinnyziegler.com

The More the Obvious the More the Oblivious

The more the obvious the more the Oblivious -How absurd this sounds yet we all know it’s true and sometimes we actually laugh about it. How many times has it happened that you find someone looking franticly for something they misplaced, and in the end it actually was right in front of them the whole time? Even more laughable is, when it’s their glasses they are searching for, and it is perched neatly and elegantly on top of their nose.

Haven’t you observed that you find a group of people conversing together and between them there is always that one obnoxious and rude person? Everyone there can be rolling their eyes on how this person is behaving but the obnoxious individual is oblivious to their own behavior.

Now let’s focus on more serious aspect of this statute, hasn’t it happened that you find yourself in a bind or predicament and you don’t see a way out, and a lot of times after a while you observe that the solution was pretty simple and obvious?

While musing over this phenomenon, I realized that this usually plays out to those personally involved.  The person that is searching for the lost item, the person who is acting inappropriate, the person who is searching for the solution, they are the one not seeing the obvious, they are the ones being oblivious to what’s going on around them, while those who are not personally involved can have a broader focus to realize the obvious elusive solution.

Now I don’t pride myself on being the great philosopher so I won’t be able to give you a great lecture or course on understanding the process of the mind or human behaviors, but I may comment on what I think is a bit of a solution to this blindness to the obvious.

"TAKE A STEP BACK!!!!! do "PRL"  PAUSE - RELAX - LOOK AGAIN"

When you feel yourself treading water and you don’t see the beach end in sight RELAX AND TRY TO TAKE A BREATH THEN LOOK AGAIN because it might be that the water is so shallow that you can actually put your feet down on the ground.

1.       Remember this law “THE MORE THE OBVIOUS THE MORE THE OBLIVIOUS “this can help you relax and look on the issue with a different attitude, an attitude that’s expecting a solution versus being in a state of panic having the feeling like being beyond reasonable help.

2.       Make a pause and give another good look on your situation, try to break the challenges you’re facing in to smaller more distinctive parts. As a quick example if you’re in debt you can break it down – total amount owed – how many lenders – by interest rate- how was the debt incurred. By breaking down the problem in to smaller parts may help your mind focus and be creative, versus getting your vision blurred by focusing on big problem.

3.       Listen and Review what those around you are saying they may not understand what you’re going thru but they can definitely tell you an outside perspective how they see it, sometimes the situation looks a lot more complicated to the person involved than it actually is.

So get your binoculars out and give it a good cleaning and look out to the world with a new perspective, not just looking far in to the horizon for that big break, that big dream to come true but a look that will find beauty and joy in what's right in front of you now.

As always wishing you the best in your journey of life, and looking forward to hear your thoughts and comments.

Pinny 

www.pinnyziegler.com