In Norway, there’s a famous saying that every child learns before they can walk:
There is no such thing as bad weather — only bad clothing choices.
If it’s raining, snowing or blowing a gale, the locals don’t stand around complaining about the weather or waiting for summer. They put on their warm clothes, grab their waterproof boots, zip up their jackets and get on with it.
The weather doesn’t care how they feel about it. It is what it is.
Now, walk into the property management department of almost any real estate agency.
Listen to what’s being said around the desks:
“The new tenancy legislation has made our jobs impossible.”
“Landlords are getting so demanding because their mortgage costs have gone up.”
“There’s just too much compliance work for our team to keep up with.”
Sound familiar?
The frustration is real, but here’s the problem. Too many PM teams are spending more time talking about how tough things are than working out what they can do differently.
They’re standing in the middle of a legislative blizzard wearing shorts and a t-shirt, complaining about how cold it is.
Here’s the reality: the rental market doesn’t care how stressed your team is.
You don’t control government legislation, tribunal decisions, minimum housing standards or interest rate movements. Complaining about them won’t make them go away. And it certainly won’t make a difficult landlord any easier to deal with.
These are the conditions we’re working in.
So rather than asking, “When will property management get easier?”, perhaps it’s time to ask a better question:
“What do we need to change to get better at managing the conditions we’re dealing with?”
Getting Your Property Management Department Ready
Go back ten years and property management was a very different game. Legislation was simpler, landlord expectations were different, and managing 150 properties using spreadsheets and a mobile phone was probably enough.
Those days are gone.
If you’re trying to manage today’s property management environment with yesterday’s systems and processes, it’s no wonder your team is feeling the pressure and your rent roll isn’t performing as well as it could.
When the conditions get tougher, you don’t need to keep wishing things were different. You need to look at what you’re doing and what needs to change.
Here are three places to start:
1. Make Sure You’re Charging for the Work You’re Doing:
Every time a new compliance requirement comes along, many agencies simply add the extra work to their PM team’s workload and absorb the cost into the existing management fee.
That’s not a great business decision.
More requirements mean more time, more administration and more responsibility. So have you looked at whether your fees actually reflect the work your team is doing?
Review your fee structure and look at where separate fees may be appropriate for services such as legislative administration, tenancy agreement preparation and compliance coordination, making sure they’re allowed under the relevant legislation.
The point is simple: don’t keep giving your team more work without looking at what it costs to deliver it.
2. Be More Careful About the Properties You Manage:
Not every management is worth keeping.
Think about the rundown properties, the landlords who constantly push back on repairs and the owners who make every small issue a battle.
How much time are these properties taking away from your team? How much stress are they creating? And are they actually worth keeping on your rent roll?
In today’s environment, a poorly maintained property can quickly turn into a much bigger problem, including tribunal disputes, tenant complaints and unnecessary pressure on your people.
It’s time to take a good look at your portfolio. Identify the owners and properties causing the most headaches and have some honest conversations.
Make it clear what needs to happen. The property needs to meet the required standards, and the owner needs to work with your team. If they’re not prepared to do that, perhaps it’s time to reconsider the management.
Sometimes, letting go of a difficult management is better for your business than keeping it just to add another property to the rent roll.
3. Set Some Clear Boundaries Around Communication:
PMs burn out when every phone call, text message and email is treated like an emergency.
Answering routine maintenance messages at 8:30 PM or dealing with an unhappy landlord over the weekend isn’t necessarily great service. It could simply mean your team hasn’t set clear boundaries.
Your team needs a clear process for handling enquiries. Use systems to receive and prioritise maintenance requests, set realistic response times, allocate time for landlord calls and make sure clients understand how your department works.
Of course, genuine emergencies need to be dealt with in line with your legal obligations and service commitments. But not every email or phone call needs an immediate response.
Good service doesn’t mean being available around the clock. It means being responsive, doing what you say you’ll do and keeping people informed.
The Leadership Standard
Having good people is important, but having the right systems and leadership around them is what helps them perform.
Tenancy legislation isn’t going to get simpler. Landlords aren’t suddenly going to stop worrying about their returns. And compliance requirements aren’t going away.
So stop waiting for property management to get easier.
Take a good look at your department. Are you charging properly for the work you’re doing? Are you keeping the right properties on your rent roll? Do your PMs have clear processes and boundaries? And, most importantly, are you giving them the support they need to do a good job?
Remember, you can’t control the weather, but you can control how prepared you are to deal with it.
Here’s a question for every agency principal and PM leader: What’s creating the biggest headache in your property management department right now, and what can you change this week to make things better?
