Where else in the business world do you see someone paid $38,000 running an asset valued at $30,000,000?
Are you losing potential profits due to an inadequately trained staff? Multifamily Property Managers (PMs) and Leasing Agents (LAs) must be thoroughly trained in a number of areas before they can effectively run an asset. More often than not we ask these folks to work pretty hard for darn little money…must we also withhold the tools and training necessary for them to be successful?
Remember that in a 7-cap market every buck of Net Operating Income (NOI) translates into $14.29 of value at the time of sale…and all properties are always for sale…at a price. Having a happy crew is nice…having a well trained group is a must.
Riverstone Property Management is notable for their meteoric rise in market share. That’s largely due to shrewd acquisitions of competitors, but there’s much more to their success than that. They are an industry leader in employee training and employee retention by design. They feel that focusing resources on these two items delivers a better value to their owner/clients, and retaining the best employees help retain clients. Every Riverstoner (an unfortunate nickname…but that’s the one they chose) has training in non discrimination laws, company values, how they are to treat residents, how to do market research, safety, reducing liability, etc. Hours and hours of training, with a mentor. Each leasing agent works from day one on developing their “kit.” The kit is a mobile office with calculator, tape measure, lists of amenities, competitive information, local attractions, great area restaurants, ATMs, dry cleaners and churches. In short, leasing agents are prepared for every question and have resources in hand (that they have personally developed) to resolve a host of housing related challenges. After four months a Riverstoner may have more valuable industry specific knowledge than many of their competitors gather in a decade.
I have a smaller property, so I can’t afford training…The smaller your staff the more important that each one be trained because they don’t have as many co-workers to back them up. In the case of a single employee on site, it is imperative to have training programs. Remember that not all training is expensive. Grace Hill www.GraceHill.com is the industry standard for excellence, offering both affordable and free courses. They also have apartment news updates, on line webinars and flexible plans permitting you to custom tailor your training program. They offer a great variety of products free, hoping multifamily professionals will also subscribe to their paid products. Riddle me this: With all the poorly trained Leasing Agents out there…why isn’t every single property using Grace Hill or one of their imitators?
Note: I am not affiliated with Riverstone Property Management, nor Grace Hill Training. I am not compensated in any way for promoting them…I’m just an ardent supporter of the way they go to market, and their approach to taking care of their clients.
Are you ready for a client centric multifamily broker? Please call me at 503.577.1034.