There are two ways you can run your property management company: as a landlord or as a property manager.
If you run your company as a landlord, you are focused on solving whatever is immediately in front of you, working as things come up. You’ll probably find yourself overwhelmed because you can never get ahead. Growing your business might seem like a dream you may never achieve because you can’t even plan for how next month is going to go. If you run your company like a landlord, you are going to burn out.
Running your company as a property manager is entirely different. You started out your company by taking the time to develop workflows and document everything. Even though you started as a small operation you worked to build your company with growth in mind, so each step of the way you already know what steps to take to grow effortlessly. Hiring and training are simplified. You can leave the office without worrying about whether a disaster will strike.
What is the difference between the two? You are NOT a landlord, you are a property manager, and so you understood the importance of the growth mindset from the beginning and built scalable processes: workflows.
Workflows are Your Most Valuable Asset
Workflows are the set of standard operating procedures you create that outline the exact policies and procedures for every stage of the property lifecycle. Creating a list of departments in a property management company is the first step to building workflows.
The basic departments we normally see in a well-organized property management company are:
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New client business development (sales) - bringing in new owners, properties, and investors
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Leasing and tenant screening
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Move-in and new tenant onboarding (leasing/main staff)
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Rent collections
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Renewals
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Evictions
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Maintenance
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Make ready and turns
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Accounting and owner distributions
Once you have defined your departments, you can further break down the different tasks that will be handled by each department, and what the workflows are for each task.
Property managers know they can save time and many headaches by creating and actively using workflows. Workflows are so much more than just a standardized operating procedure, they are:
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New hire training tools and a job description
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Guides for measuring the performance of an employee or department
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A resource for employees to consult when they have questions
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A roadmap to success
It’s Not Too Late
Even if you’re already in business and operating like a landlord, it isn’t too late. Ideally, workflows are created early on when you are starting out, so they are built into the structure of your company, but better late than never.
As a property management marketing and consulting company, we have worked with existing property management companies to help them to get their workflows and procedures in place so they could free up the time and resources to start focusing on growth.
Our course, “How to Start, Run, and Grow a Property Management Business” focuses extensively on the creation of workflows and what they should include because they are such vital tools for a successful property manager.
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