CREJ - Property Management Quarterly - February 2015
In order to gain a quick understanding of property managers in Colorado, Property Management Quarterly conducted an informal survey. We received responses from 48 Colorado property managers from seven companies who answered a questionnaire about their profession. We wanted to learn who property managers are, how they became managers and what keeps them going. Interestingly, not a single person said he had a property management career path on his radar in high school. “In high school being a property manager was not on my radar screen; in fact, most people don’t even know what a property manager is until they get out into the real estate industry and see the different avenues people can take,” said René D. Wineland, Transwestern vice president, management services. There were a handful who said they knew they wanted to go into real estate, and an even smaller number who had some exposure to property management through family members. “My father was a facilities manager, and I had no desire to work as hard as he did,” said Amanda Schuck, Newmark Grubb Knight Frank senior property manager. “It appears that I am more like my dad than I thought!” A majority of the property managers polled went to college, often studying business. Almost 10 percent reported they originally wanted to be lawyers. While industry experience ranged among respondents from less thanfive years to more than 35 years, one admirable commonality is that everyone got to where they are today by starting at the bottom and working their way up. Many reported their first jobs involved administrative work, reception, bookkeeping or leasing. From there, others gave them opportunities to advance. “I liked that the potential to grow from a starting position was relatively limitless,” said Lea Slawson, JLL vice president, property management. Helping others within the industry is a trait many property managers seem to share. Several people said their favorite part of the job is mentoring and working closely with their team. This seems to be a special, if not unique, quality about the world of property management. “I definitely like working with people – you have to love people in this line of work,” said Bev Renfro, NGKF senior property manager. “It helps to have an understanding heart, a desire to work with challenges and help people, and a focus on the big picture of the ownership’s direction.” Surprisingly, while working with people was a popular answer to why people love their job, it was not the most common answer. The No. 1 reason managers said they love their job is because no two days are the same. Even though the question was open-ended – simply what do you like most about your job – a vast majority of the 48 managers said they like the variety of job duties and the constantly changing daily agenda. “I liked that things were always changing,” said Charles Pae, Unico Properties senior manager. “Property management is a field where things move quickly, which makes it a really exciting field to work in.” “I like that the job is so varied – every day presents a new mystery to be solved,” said NGKF’s Schuck. “A property manager needs to be a detective as well, utilizing investigative skills and exploring ideas outside of the box to find appropriate resolutions to challenges.” Being a problem solver is the thirdmost common answer people gave for loving their job. “I like the mix between financial and people-facing responsibilities, and I like that no two days are alike,” said Connie O’Murray, JLL group manager. “But I especially like the strategy and problem-solving aspects of adding value to a client’s investment.” Even though managers love the spectrum of work they do, it does play into one of the biggest challenges managers face: time management. “It is clearly not a job for someone who must check every item off their list before they go home at night because there’s always something to do,” said Jeani McDowell, Cushman & Wakefield general manager. With the juggling of responsibilities, managers said they must be keenly aware of managing everyone’s expectations. “My biggest challenge is not enough time in the day,” said a Griffis/Blessing property manager. “I believe we all suffer from this. Some days I would pay big money to have a clone of myself.” Other challenges include issues dealing with low occupancy and minimal cash flow at properties, spending quality time on site and interacting with tenants, staying up to date with industry changes (codes, committees and technologies), the 24/7 work mentality, managing the work-life balance and having to be the bearer of bad news. “Another big challenge for me is when you have to take emotion out of the equation,” said Courtney M. Ziminski, JLL general manager. “For example, when you have a small tenant who is struggling financially. The last thing you want to do is evict someone who may be depending on their office/business to support a family – but it’s technically part of the job.” “One of the biggest challenges is providing ‘full service’ at an economic price,” said Michelle Roberts, Colliers International senior retail property manager. “This requires heavy involvement in day-to-day operations to be able to identify where you can ‘trim’ services or having to add new or additional services before they become a common complaint with tenants.”
The final question was an openended request to share a crazy property management experience. The responses ran the gamut. “There are just so many that our team deals with, from rescuing baby geese every spring to assisting with a young lady with a drug problem that claimed she had died the day before,” said Jodi L. Janda, JLL general manager. A lot of the stories dealt with legal issues, from a tenant subleasing part of his property to a marijuanaaffiliated store before it was legal, to FBI raids for Ponzi schemes, to a tenant moving into his office after losing his house. Some were serious and heartbreaking, often dealing with death, mental illness or abuse. One manager found a tenant bleeding and barely breathing, but she wore a bracelet that said, “Do not resuscitate.” After calling an ambulance, the manager sat with her until she died. Another involved a 14-year-old who committed suicide by jumping off a parking garage. A good majority of the stories were inappropriate. From discovering naked people in the hot tub after hours to figuring out who was breaking into an office late at night to use a computer for nonbusiness purposes. “Evidence of the activity included computers found turned on in the morning that had been off when the employee left the night before, website history revealing that inappropriate sites had been visited, and tissues and hand lotion moved from other desks and left near the computer in question,” said Deborah Loewenstein, property manager, JLL. After increased security rounds and hidden cameras, a female security guard “literally caught the culprit with his pants down,” she said. Another property manager said she'd received a late-night call about having to deal with poop in the parking lot. The poll showed that property managers have heard all kinds of strange requests, including a request to set up a petting zoo with zebras and elephants for a tenant event, to a Belgian film producer wanting to make a movie by filming his suicide as he jumped off the building. And last were stories about discovering the completely unexpected. “We needed to repair a rubber liner on a small retention pond at an office building in south Denver and had to drain it in order to do so,” said Scott Hogy, NGKF senior property manager. “As the water was drained out, we discovered goldfish in the pond. Some of the employees of the tenant had placed the goldfish there and were distraught that the fish would all die. They even called the Division of Wildlife! We were told by the authorities that the fish were considered an invasive species and under no circumstances were they to be released into any public water. “In the end, I found myself, along with four of my engineers, standing in the pond with waders, netting well over 100 goldfish into trash cans so we could transport them to a detention pond at another nearby building where, thankfully, the property manager had graciously agreed to take them.” After reading all the answers, a property manager from Griffis/Blessing summed up the duties of a property manager well, “This is definitely a career path where you can be a counselor, attorney, family mediator, constructor expert, baby sitter, special events coordinator or financial adviser without ever having the degrees.