Scaling your property management business can mean taking on new properties that aren't close to your office or normal service area. Part of managing properties efficiently and delivering excellent customer service requires being able to get to rentals often (and quickly) to conduct inspections or respond to maintenance requests.
When properties get further away from your base of operations, employees spend more time traveling to and from properties, which can increase your overhead costs while reducing efficiency. So what can property managers do to scale effectively and expand their reach? Check out these tips from a property management expert!
What Location Factors Impact Effective Property Management?
You want to take on more doors, but there aren't enough doors in your current service area to add more clients to scale your business. That means it's time to consider properties further away from your offices. Still, property managers must also think through critical factors that can impact the quality of services delivered to rental homes that are further away.
A property management consultant can help you work through critical issues when expanding your service area, including:
- Compensating for longer distances between the office and multiple rental properties (and the unproductive time your team members will spend traveling to properties)
- The challenges of the distance between rental properties when employees need to care for more than one property in the same day
- Variations in market research and data availability, depending on the location of properties within your market
- The challenges of understanding and managing the unique aspects of different neighborhoods, including multiple HOAs, ordinances, restrictions, and permits
- Maintaining relationships with trusted vendors and contractors who have to travel further to deliver routine maintenance and repairs for properties under your management
If your expansion plans include an additional franchise within your market—or in a new market—these issues compound the critical question of "how do I manage more doors when the distance becomes a factor?" Instead of giving up on your growth plans (or worse), lowering your standards for delivering quality property management services to clients, working with a property management valuation expert can help!
Analyze Options and Implement Strategies to Go the Distance
First, property managers must eliminate the option of lowering their quality of services. If existing customers start experiencing poor customer service while you add more doors (and distance challenges), you'll lose your long-term property owners and tenants before you have a chance to bring in new business. Plus, one of your best selling points in your market is that you deliver the best services compared to other property management companies. Sacrificing service to spread your team across more properties and greater distances won't help you dominate your market.
Adding distance and doors can't happen at the expense of your current client demands and quality of services. However, distance can create more property management issues. To explore better options, a property management consultant can help identify strategies to improve efficiency and add capacity to compensate for team members that must spend more time in the field to cover your expanded service areas.
Some of the best strategies for a property manager to manage distance and doors well include:
- Adding more team members. However, it's essential to add the right team members with clearly-defined roles, whether you hire in-person employees to cover more distance or shift some tasks away from existing employees to a virtual assistant.
- Optimize workflows. Inefficient processes and a lack of automation become an even greater liability when adding a degree of distance difficulty to managing more properties.
- Evaluate property management software and systems. With team members spending more time traveling between properties, they must be able to operate remotely, often with mobile devices. Make sure your management systems allow easy access to employees who are onsite at properties during the day.
- Ongoing team training. Often, serving properties that add distance into your operational equation requires more training for employees to learn new processes and systems. Whether you're adding new team members or shifting workloads among current employees, an ongoing property management training program is essential for success.
Serving doors at a greater distance from your current properties or office is an excellent way to grow your real estate management business! Take time to anticipate potential issues and put strategies in place to maintain excellent service to existing owners and renters while supporting your team through expanding where you work in your market.
A Property Management Expert Helps Property Managers Overcome Distance Challenges
Ready to dominate your market? If you're thinking about taking on properties that are further away from your base of operations, a property management consultant can help your company succeed with this type of growth. Real-Time Consulting Services helps a property management company analyze operations, evaluate team needs, and implement software and strategies to support more doors. We can also help you analyze your profit per door to ensure that your company meets current and long-term revenue goals. Learn more about how we can help you grow when scheduling a free consultation!
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