Habits of Successful Property Managers: 4 Things You Must Do

Updated June 13, 2022

Business owners can easily get bogged down by the day-to-day tasks of operating a property management business. However, developing the habits of a successful property manager and balancing your company's management isn’t always easy. 

Professional property management training can help you hone your property management skills while managing your business. Once you learn and maintain critical skills, you'll experience a healthier company (and better profits)!

What are some critical habits to boost your success? Check out these four top habits of successful property managers.

1. Improve Your Approach to Technology and Communication

One of the best property management tips from a coach is that communication is one of the most important foundational principles for success. When you work as the facilitator between property owners and tenants, it's critical to establish excellent communication methods to respond to every need. You are responsible for most rental business operation tasks, such as handling maintenance queries, marketing vacant properties, facilitating lease signing and renewals, etc.

Are you losing things in translation or forgetting critical details? It might be time to update your communication tools and strategy to keep track of lease renewals, tenant requests, and other details to improve your operations. 

Studies show that organizations that embrace digital transformations improve their customer services by 20% to 30% and can have 20% to 50% economic gains. Technology can help you improve your property management services by streamlining communication, reporting, customer care services, and task tracking for your staff. 

A property management coach can help you:

• Create maintenance or other request templates to streamline the communication process for tenants. Upload these templates to the tenant portal for easy access and tracking. 
• Set up automatic reminders for renters to pay the rent.
• Implement a ticketing or project management tasking system to help your staff keep track of critical to-dos

Property management consultants can help you find the right technology solutions to implement efficient processes. The right coach can also train your team to use new systems that improve communication with tenants and owners.

2. Create a Killer Playbook to Grow Property Management Business Client Base

Growth not only includes increasing the number of doors you have in your property management portfolio, but you also need to add new clients and manage every property well! 

Creating a killer playbook for your operations and goals can help you grow your client base. A property management coach can help you develop a documented collection of all your approaches to getting things done well for existing clients and new property owners and tenants. Your playbook should include your company's cultural values, process workflows, standard operating procedures, and strategies.

An excellent playbook keeps everyone accountable and enables you to scale your business efficiently, and helps everyone on your team operate with the same goals and accountability. New members and outsourced contractors can benefit from a playbook that helps them adapt your company values and methods of operation to be an extension of your brand. 

3. Stay Organized and Check Tasks off Your To-Do List One by One

To improve your investment portfolio and stay on top of your game, you need to be organized. Start by creating a to-do list so you and your team can remember every task required to manage rentals effectively. As you tick off each item one by one, you make progress toward delighting existing property owners and tenants and impressing new clients to grow the number of doors under your management.

If you are a procrastinator (or have one on your team), find a way to prioritize tasks and get them done to meet all deadlines. If your staff is overwhelmed with too many tasks to do in a day, consider outsourcing or hiring additional employees to manage workloads and improve efficiency.

4. Learn From Mistakes, Colleagues, Your Network, and Consultants 

Surrounding yourself with a trusted network of colleagues and consultants can help you learn from mistakes and apply expert strategies for growth! Realizing that you don’t know everything and can make mistakes is a critical part of developing better habits for success.

Take the time to educate yourself on changes to local real estate laws, emergency market trends, and rental prices. Learn these things from your go-to legal expert and other professionals in the industry. 

Using a property management coach is also a valuable way to apply an outside set of expert eyes to highlight areas of your processes or operations that need improvement. With a consultant, you get a fresh perspective on things and receive expert help to improve processes and technology, hire the right team members, and train your staff. 

Let a Consultant Help You Build a Successful Property Management Company

Mastering good habits can be challenging if you try to do it on your own. Property management training can help you build these four excellent habits (and more)!

Real-Time Consulting Services helps property management business owners analyze operations, technology, and teams. We also deliver customized solutions for property management companies to improve every aspect of a business and build better habits for more success! If you're ready to improve the habits you need for growth, let's schedule a free consultation to talk more about how we can help. 

How is the health of your property management business? Find out when you download our free 10-Point Inspection of Your Property Management Company.