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Dealing with D&O
Enforcing House Rules
Pool Closing
Snow - How to plan for the inevitable
What is a Management Company?
What Your Manager Should Know
Self-Management: Risky Scheme?
Why Bother to Budget?
Review Your Record Keeping
What Are You Getting for Your Management Dollars?
Article: What Your Manager Should Know
By: Alvin Wasserman
From Habitat Magazine
Alvin Wasserman is director of Fairfield Property Services in Commack, N.Y.
Property managers today require skills in administration, finance, and maintenance to be effective in their assignments. There are many educational programs offered by various organizations and schools that provide training for managers. The information a manager receives from courses does not become knowledge until it is combined with experience.
Financial skills include the ability to prepare budgets using spreadsheet software on computers. The modern manager needs to be able to download data from property management software onto a spreadsheet. The manager then can design "macros" to carry forward information from previous years and to project income and expenses for the coming year.
For example, changing a projection for a specific repair and maintenance category (e.g. plumbing) on the worksheet in one field should carry into the consolidated line for "Repairs and Maintenance" (all categories) on the draft of the budget. Footnotes are included to explain special circumstances or variances. Once set up properly, computer automation using spreadsheet skills is efficient and makes annual modifications easy.
On average, a property manager will collect data for six to eight budgets per year and submit them to an account executive. That executive will coordinate this data and present as many as 15 budgets per year. A vice president or director of management may oversee 50 to 100 budgets per year. Given these requirements, it is essential for property managers to have computer savoir faire in order to remain competitive in the industry.
Administrative skills for property managers translate into systematically organizing tasks. The difference between competence and incompetence is enormous, and is often defined by organizational skills. It is impossible for property managers to remember everything required of them. Observe whether a manager enters a "to do" item into an organizer book, or enters it into an electronic organizer. Either works, but I prefer the latter since it is portable, can be edited in the field on a hand-held device, and can be synchronized on a computer in the office and at home. Contacts can be organized into groups: boards, contractors, vendors, attorneys, accountants, properties' staff, and so on. Even e-mail messages can be retrieved and sent from any location using personal electronic organizers with applicable operating systems. Information can be "beamed" from one compatible organizer to another. If a property manager does not use an electronic organizer then he or she must have a paper organizer and date book with them at all times.
Knowledge of property maintenance is the other area in which managers must have expertise. Major categories that property managers need familiarity with are: code compliance, mechanical systems (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning equipment, compactors, elevators, etc.), roofs, water towers, masonry, brick work and facade, windows, and interior design. Property managers do not need to be an expert in all aspects of maintenance but they must know what they do not know and when to get help. Most boards prefer an honest "I do not know but will find out" to a fabricated response.
It is uncommon for a property manager to have mastery of administrative, financial, and maintenance skills. Generally, managers have a strong side and a weak side. This is where the support that is provided by the property management firm is crucial.
Staff supervision and staff meetings nurture the professional development of managers to train them to organize their work to achieve successful completion of tasks. Support staff - secretaries, clerical, purchasing manager, and assistants - allow the manager to be exactly as the title implies, a "manager," not a jack-of-all-trades. If the property management firm was not organized, it would be very difficult for the property managers to organize themselves and succeed.
The management company must have a back office that provides accurate and timely financial reports with accountants on staff to respond to board members when the managers' strong side is maintenance. Real-time information available via a wide-area network from the computer of the bank to the management company's computer provides precise data on a daily basis. A management company needs to reconcile bank accounts and audit the properties' financial reports every month. The one thing, more than anything else, that drives boards to distraction is when they are not certain as to what is happening with their funds.
The management company's engineering, construction and development department complement property maintenance skills for managers with greater strength on the administrative and financial side. The number of years a management company is in business, with experience in property maintenance, can also be a factor to help property managers fulfill their commitments.
Clearly, managing property today is not a simple matter. The prerequisites for property managers and property management companies are significant in order to be effective in the service to our clients.
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