What To Look For In A Property Manager

Choosing the right property manager as a landlord can be the difference between a smooth and stress-free management or endless chains of emails, and ultimately, unhappy tenants.

Ray White Property Management Business Development Executive NSW, Bernadette Coutis talks about what it takes to be ‘the right person’ for a landlord.

“There’s no doubt that property management is a challenging role at times and it’s a role that some people do struggle with – you certainly have to have a strong mentality for you to be able to make a successful career out of property management.

You need the ability to read people very fast. A mistake regularly made is painting everyone with the same brush. Everyone is unique and every situation or issue is different.

But the absolute key is outstanding communication between a landlord and their property manager – the one thing that ruins trust and that relationship is a lack of trust.

There’s nothing that beats picking up the phone to fully understand what’s happening and a person’s tone can be better understood through talking. Email and text messages should be used as follow-up tools only.

The fact is there will always be issues in properties but those issues can be mitigated and resolved far quicker if both parties are aware of where the other stands.”

Along with communication, time management skills and someone who really understands their industry are highly desirable traits.

Landlords want their property managers to be experts in their field and they expect them to know what’s going on within their industry,” Ms Coutis went on to say.

This is a highly legislative business and that means there’s never a shortcut that can be taken. One wrong move on a lease and everything can be undone.

That means the demands are high and you need to have the ability to juggle multiple things at once. You must be prepared to see something through from start to finish.

Property managers deal with horrible events such as fires, floods and disasters and it takes a unique attribute to be able to take it all in, take a step back, and organise a way forward.

But all of this comes back to the absolute key, and that’s communication. When a client calls with an urgent matter, you can’t wait three hours to call them back.

Communication breeds trust and once both sides are aware of what the issue is at the earliest opportunity – that breeds trust and builds the relationship.

The ideal position for a property manager to be in is when you receive a call with an issue and the landlord simply trusts you to get the problem solved without any need for them to get involved. Autonomy for a property manager is worth its weight in gold.

That’s the highest level of trust you can achieve and means both the tenant and landlord get a solution at the earliest point. The best outcome is when both parties are happy with the result.”