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The Best Property Management Companies Are the Ones That Have Built Strong Teams

Posted on 22. Feb, 2010 by Mike Levy in Business

Over the last several months I have interviewed 50 of the most successful property managers across the United States. Excellent people skills and an enthusiastic and positive attitude were qualities of successful property managers. But the one thing that became very clear, early on in my interviews, was that building strong teams was critical to the success of a property management company.

When interviewing the most successful property management companies, there were three key elements to building a strong team that were consistently mentioned:

1. Set high expectations and hold your team accountable
   You get the most out of your employees when you ask them to give 110%, you let them know what you expect of them in terms of results, and then you measure those results to ensure that the expectations were met. If you leave out any of these three components, you typically will not end up with a strong performing team. Chances are pretty good that if someone does not know what is expected of them or how they are going to be evaluated, they will fail at achieving what you want from them.
2. Hire the best possible employees for your team
   If you are going to have a strong team, you are going to need top notch employees and that is very dependent on the quality of your hiring process. To ensure an effective hiring process, a number of the property managers indicated they use behavioral interviewing to ensure that the employees being hired had the key skills they were looking for. Many also indicated that they typically looked for specific soft skills versus property management skills and experience. As Bev Perina (Armadillo Property Management) said in our interview, “I cannot stress enough how important it is to hire people much smarter than yourself”.
3. Make sure you have the right people in the right positions
   Another common theme was making sure you have people with the right skills and personalities in each of your job positions. Some property management positions require strong communication and people interaction skills. However, other positions might require more analytical and accounting skills. As Glenn Gonzales (PPA Real Estate Management) so aptly explained, “Put the right people in the right place doing the right things”.

Be sure to register for the webinar on February 24th at 10 AM PST.

The interviews are documented in Mike Levy’s upcoming book: “50 Interviews: Successful Property Managers.” Volume 1 (the first 25 interviews) will be published in February 2010; followed by Volume II (the remaining 25 interviews) in April 2010.

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The Right Team Is Your #1 Ingredient For Success In Property Management

Tags: business