2022: The Road Ahead

2022: The Road Ahead

Your plan for a successful new year

Create A Winning Strategy

The start of the new year is an excellent time to take stock of where your property management business is and where you want it to go. When thinking about your strategy for the coming year, ask yourself three questions:

1. How is your property management business performing?

This seems like it should have a straight answer, but the truth is, there are many shades of gray when it comes to this question. You might find that there are areas where your team is performing well, but there are other areas where you'd like them to perform better.

Here are some aspects of your business to consider. Take a moment and rate your business on a scale of 1 (poor) to 10 (excellent) for each:

• Financial - Overall Revenue
• Financial - Debts
• Financial - Employee Income & Benefits
• Financial - Ability to Expand, Purchase Supplies, etc.
• Finding New Tenants
• Retaining Current Tenants
• Tenant Satisfaction & Reviews
• Efficiency/Time to Finish Maintenance Jobs and Prep Units
• Overall Appearance & Upkeep of Units
• Employee Performance
• Employee Satisfaction & Retainment

2. What goals do you want to set for the new year?

Take a look at how you scored your business for each of the bullet points above. Is there any point where you scored over five? Fantastic! Is there any point where you scored below five? That's great too—you have just identified an area that needs improvement. When thinking about the new year, consider setting a goal to improve in the low-scoring areas, while maintaining performance in the high-scoring ones.

Now, separately from that list, close your eyes for a moment and dream. In your vision of a well-oiled property management machine, what do you see? The sky's the limit! It doesn't matter if it's impossible, dream big. For example, do you envision a business where employees behave and are treated like experts and paid above market rate? Or perhaps you see that your business has expanded to a regional or national franchise? Once you have your big lofty dream in mind, open your eyes and think about what it means. While expanding your business to a national franchise or putting employees on salary might not be attainable in the near future, they will give you clues as to a direction you should explore. For example, you could set a goal to give employees a small raise or expand to managing two new properties in a nearby market.

Based on your performance assessment and the dream exercise, write down your list of goals.

3. What can you do to meet those goals?

For each goal on your list, write down three actions you can take to achieve it. For example, if one goal is to improve tenant satisfaction and reviews, your three actions might be to: provide maintenance employees with advanced training, change job processes to include additional check-ins with tenants after maintenance work so that any issues can be addressed promptly, ask happy tenants to write positive reviews online.

This list of actions is your performance strategy for the new year. But don't stop just yet! Now you've got to put your strategy into an action plan. Whenever possible, schedule an action date for each action in your list. For example, if one of the actions is to provide more training for employees, write down a date by which you'd like employees to receive that training. If needed, break each action into smaller actions, such as: research training programs, notify employees, enroll employees in training, facilitate training. For every action big or small, give it a date to give it a better chance of being done. As they say, “Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” ― Benjamin Franklin, so writing down a list of actions with no date on them often means that they'll be pushed off indefinitely. When all of your goals have an appropriate list of dated actions, pat yourself on the back. You've just created a business strategy and action plan for the new year. Impressive!

New Year, New Painting Projects

Regardless of the goals you've set for the new year, there's one task that is almost guaranteed to be on your list: painting. Now is the time to get out ahead of common area maintenance and improvement projects before the busy season hits.

Some items to tackle early in the year include common area walls, perimeter walls, and site walls. Getting these general updates in place now ensures that your team will have more time to focus on repainting and repairing individual units in the spring. Standout products that provide excellent durability and performance are Acri-Hues® and Spartashield. Be sure to check the specs for each job to ensure you have the right fit.

A word of caution: avoid the temptation to blindly cover problem areas without fixing underlying issues. Some problems, if not addressed correctly, can come back to haunt you. Issues that often plague common area walls include efflorescence (white deposits that appear on concrete, brick, block, stucco, mortar, and other masonry surfaces), chalking (fine powder on the surface of old paint), and mildew. Surfaces will need to be treated properly to deal with existing issues in order to ensure that new paint adheres correctly.

For all of your property's painting needs, there's one free resource you can use to ensure that each job is a success: call us first! Your Dunn-Edwards Property Services Representative will take the pain out of painting—by helping you identify problem areas, specify the correct paint, find qualified contractors, assist with job walks, and eliminate the guesswork on color selection.

By the time the job is finished, you will have transformed your property's high-traffic areas from common to exceptional. Take advantage of this opportunity to update the property's photographs on any websites, listings, and in your own property portfolio. You'll be amazed at how much of an impact this can have on your marketing efforts.

Here's to a successful new year for your property management business!