maintenance
Leveraging Ben Franklin’s Wisdom in Property Management
The Timeless Value of Prevention: How Discipline and Process Can Revolutionize Your Property Management Business
Photo by Adam Nir on Unsplash
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In the multifamily space, success isn’t just about managing what’s present but about preparing for what’s coming. Leveraging the wisdom of Ben Franklin’s well-known quote, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” I dive into the critical need for discipline and meticulous processes in property management. Embracing these principles can transform your operation, minimize risk, and lead to lasting success.
The challenges in property management are multifaceted. Issues ranging from resident satisfaction to compliance, unexpected maintenance, and as of late fluctuating market conditions constantly demand attention. How do you stay ahead of these challenges? How do you turn potential problems into opportunities? The adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” holds a profound answer.
A Few Thoughts
- Strategic Planning – Strategic planning is the cornerstone of prevention in property management. Executives can set the stage for a more prosperous and stable future by carefully evaluating potential risks and forecasting future trends. The benefit of this approach is the ability to identify opportunities, allocate resources effectively, and sidestep potential pitfalls. At RADCO, we do this quarterly and annually using the Scaling Up Framework.
- Regular Maintenance and Inspection – Regular and systematic inspection and maintenance of properties can prevent minor issues from becoming costly disasters. Proactive maintenance is a cost-effective way to maintain property value, ensure tenant satisfaction, and comply with regulations. We use the HappyCo app to keep us on task.
- Robust Compliance Management – In an industry with ever-changing legal and regulatory landscapes, it’s vital to have a robust compliance management system. Doing so reduces legal risk, protects your reputation, and maintains good relationships with authorities. We use HappyCo and Acclaimant to track compliance-related concerns.
- Strong Resident Relationship Management – Building and nurturing resident relationships is more than good business sense; it’s a form of prevention. Understanding and anticipating tenant needs can prevent dissatisfaction, reduce turnover, and foster a strong community feeling.
- Embrace Technology and Innovation – Leveraging cutting-edge technology streamlines operations and offers insights into potential areas of concern. Using technology as a preventative tool, property management leaders can make more informed decisions and create a competitive edge.
- Invest in People and Training – People are the backbone of any successful organization. Investing in training and development ensures that your team can manage challenges proactively. A well-trained workforce is more efficient and can identify and prevent issues before they escalate.
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Incentivizing Multifamily Maintenance Techs
Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash
As a property manager, you know that all team members are essential to building a positive resident experience. However, maintenance technicians often have the most impact on residents, as they are the ones who interact with them the most. If you want to encourage and recognize the successes of your maintenance technicians, here are nine ways to do it:
- Pay a premium for good technicians, and base raises on performance. Using maintenance management software, you can gather hundreds of data points about technician performance to measure their value to the company.
- Offer flexible hours to help technicians maintain a healthy work/life balance and reduce the chances of burnout. Centralization through technology can also improve the technician experience by allowing them to sync data and report to a central source, reducing the need to go back and forth to the leasing office constantly.
- Create a career path for technicians by offering training and grooming opportunities to help them advance or specialize. This can increase job satisfaction and make technicians more likely to stay with your company.
- Acknowledge and recognize the hard work and achievements of your technicians. This can include verbal recognition, small bonuses for going above and beyond, and proactively giving raises for consistently good performance.
- Offer professional development and training opportunities to help technicians improve their skills and advance their careers.
- Implement a rewards program that recognizes and rewards technicians for exceptional performance, such as meeting specific productivity goals or going above and beyond for residents.
- Provide technicians with the tools and equipment they need to do their jobs effectively, including access to technology and software to help them be more efficient.
- Encourage a positive and supportive work culture where technicians feel valued and appreciated for their contributions.
- Provide benefits such as gym memberships, team-building events, or employee wellness programs, and employee benefits that can make the job more enjoyable and rewarding.
Implementing some or all of these strategies can improve your maintenance technicians’ job satisfaction and performance, leading to a better resident experience and lower staff turnover rates.
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Episode 18 | Adrian Danila | Collective Conversations
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Let’s Do Some Average Work
Average gets a leasing person a fair amount of sales
An average service tech can do a fair amount of tickets in a day
An average make ready tech can do a fair amount of turns in a day
An average assistant manager can process a fair amount of transactions in a day
An average manager can lead a fair charge
Ever Get Annoyed?
Do you ever think – I really have a disdain for this guy or that gal because they seem to get more done in an hour than I get done all week? They get twice the commissions for half the work. They get twice as many service requests done in a day than I do and they head home on time everyday.
Get Annoyed Get Excellent
Put that ill-headed pride aside – get pissed – get over it and just ask. Ask that top producer what it is that makes them different. Ask them how they organize their day. What they say to people during the apartment tour and demonstration that gets them so many leases. Ask the leader how he/she gets so much out of their team. Then get busy doing that stuff.
This note from the margin got me thinking about the things that I do to avoid being average –
- I am number challenged. Budgets, forecasts and proformas are the bane of my existence. This is the hard work part of the business to me. What did I decide to do about it. I took out a budget and starting a blog series. I will take roughly two years – writing once a week – to think through and define every single line item right through the debt.
- For the longest time I really struggled with the written word – to combat that, I started reading everything I could get my hands on. I took the time to memorize the 5000 words used on the SAT test. And, I started this blog.
- I struggled with giving and taking feedback to and from industry leaders. Answer – I started participating in industry forums like the ones you see on Multifamily Insiders.
- I struggled with finishing. I love to start things but I get to a point and I lose interest. Answer – this is the eighth year of M Brewer Group. I have changed the name three times over the years and have written well over 2000 posts. And, I hope to never finish but not for lack of an endgame.
- I learned some basic code language so I could tweak the look of my blog. Word to the wise on this point (have a Mike Whaling backup plan if you get it wrong).
- As mentioned above – I read a ton.
- I am constantly trying something, suggesting we try something or pushing to get something done.
- I exercise.
- And, I love people where they are at without enabling them to settle.
Guess what, I still misspell words, break the rules of grammar, start and don’t finish, muck up budget work and go long stretches without posting to this blog. Do I fret – no. I acknowledge, learn from it and move on.
What do you do to keep yourself from doing above average work?
Your looking past average work multifamily manic,
M
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Love: Be the Difference that Makes a Difference
You will always be the second best anyone else. – Leo Buscaglia
Leo, in his book titled: Love, tells an amazing story as it relates to having love for oneself. I intend to give you the very much paraphrased version. He takes you on a visual journey back to grade school. He has you remember the anticipation you held in your little heart and mind over the art teacher coming around to your classroom. It was that time where you got to put down the lead and pick up the oily Crayola. It was time to put method, pragmatism, social order and conformity to rest so as to wake up the wild and the crazy. It was time to do the thing you love. Or, so you thought….
I Don’t Love Your Tree
His story picks up in description of the art teacher drawing a simple tree on the chalk board and instructing the class to follow suit by replicating it on the blank sheet of paper in front of them. Two lines mirrored just inches apart and headed for the top of the page. Lines that lend themselves to branches. And, a line that mimics a camel hump repeated in a circular motion starting on the right and finding itself up and around nearing the top of the page and back down to a point where it intersects with the vertical line on the left. Boom – it’s a tree. Yes – you did it. You and everyone else except for Junior.
You quite presumably know where this is going. Yes – Leo inserts ‘that guy/gal’ into the story. He calls him Junior. And, Junior produces a tree with the love and care that Michael Angelo gave in creating some of the finest art the world has ever seen. The love that a kid gives to choosing his yellow, green, orange and magenta with overtones of red and shades of grey, black and just enough brown. The love that creates the freakiest most awesome and over the top tree that art teacher, the class and the world at large has ever seen. That love that gets shunned, booed, kicked and yeah butted right out of the room. The love that gets you remarks like – I don’t love your tree…
Please Conform
Conformity kicks the teeth right out of love. It asks a maintenance technician to master electricity when plumbing is his first love. It’s asks our best maintenance supervisor to lead the troops to the top of the mountain and into war when tinkering and solving mechanical problems is his first love. It asks our best leasing people to master accounting when servicing people is his/her first love. It’s telling someone who the best way to do something is the way that you do it. Or the way the company does it. Or the way your dad used to do it. It’s the continued ripping of life right out of people the same way it was ripped out of Junior.
Punch Line
Starting today – Don’t give up your tree…
Have a non-conforming weekend,
Your, never giving up my tree, multifamily manic,
M