I’m honored to be moderating a breakout session at the 23rd Southern California Real Estate Conference & Trade Show presented by the Orange County Chapter of IREM on May 30th at the Hyatt Regency in Garden Grove, CA. The breakout session is entitled “Marketing Your Property for Success.”
The panelists will be Vince Ciavarella of Sares-Regis (owner’s perspective), Randy Mason of Commercial Realty Specialists (tenant rep perspective), and Allison Schneider of CBRE (listing brokers perspective). Since the audience will be primarily consist of property managers, the discussion will be tailored to provide information that we hope will be of greatest value to them.
In preparation for the panel discussion, the panelists and I met a number of times to organize our thoughts. No matter what details we discussed, a few common themes screamed out to me.
It strikes me that a key difference between people who are very successful and those who are not is that very successful people take the initiative. They don’t sit back and wait for things to come to them. This has to be equally true of property managers.
Allison, being an accomplished listing broker, describes a very collaborative environment that she, her owners and property managers all participate in. I am not sure that her experience is typical. Of course, maybe that’s why she is so good at what she does.
Property managers should be part of the management team of the property. This seems obvious but in practice may be the farthest thing from the truth. Among other things, they should be aware of the marketing efforts and other plans for the property, and they should regularly participate in discussions with the marketing team, ownership and the brokers.
Far too often, property managers are left out the marketing efforts and discussions of the brokers and owners.
Be aware of what your tenants like and do not like. How can the property better serve the tenants and the owner? How can the property manager serve as a true liaison between the tenants and ownership? These and other valuable bits of information are, likely, very helpful to ownership, not only for marketing purposes but for the purpose of maximizing the owners overall investment.
Don’t take the low road and wait for someone to ask you to join the conversation. Take the initiative and call ownership. Ask questions and volunteer your knowledge.
Don’t just be a record keeper or an Excel spreadsheet expert.
When was the last time the property manager called the broker to find out what was going on with leasing? Call, at least once a week, if the listing broker doesn’t call first.
Make yourself valuable to the owner, your company and most of all, yourself. You will not only be a much better property manager, but a much better person in life.
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