In this presentation, Mendell Gosnell of Centurion reviews findings from a recent investor survey on how property owners evaluate professional property management firms. The survey identified the top criteria investors use, each with a percentage of respondents who consider it important: professionalism (51%), tenant satisfaction (43%), speed of communication (42%), repair costs (39%), time to lease (37%), vacancy rates (35%), management fees (31%), and frequency of accounting errors (28%). Gosnell expands on each factor, explaining why it matters and offering practical insights—such as comparing repair costs to open‑market pricing, balancing the cost‑speed‑quality triangle in maintenance, the financial impact of vacancy and lease speed, the need for reasonable but sufficient fees to attract quality staff, and the importance of rigorous accounting audits and transparent error handling. He concludes by inviting comments and offering Centurion’s services for property owners seeking professional management.
Chapters
Another video about some industry insights. So this comes from a recent survey done of investors who have their properties professionally managed or who have had them professionally managed and the things that they evaluate their property manager or their property management company on. So there's a small list here. I would like to go through them really quick. Number 1, the biggest thing that they ma— evaluate their property managers on is professionalism, with 51% saying that they look at the overall professionalism of the property management organization, their property manager, and just top to bottom, are they a professional organization. The second, with 43%, being tenant satisfaction. So Interesting, this is one of the things that we are always focused on. We tell our investor clients as well as train our staff that although the real estate, the property is very valuable and our clients are paying us for a service, the reality is, is that all money that comes to the investor and all the money that comes to us as a property management company really comes, um, via the tenant. And 3, 42% said speed of communication. This one is something that is always a challenge, one that we're striving to get better at at Centurion, um, looking at what is the, uh, owner's preference. Email, um, some owners actually want us just to handle things and not bug them. That's why they're turning things over to us. So speed of communication, But that also is speed of communication with vendors, speed of communication with the tenants. And so how do you do that? Remain efficient and not get wires crossed. Super important one to continue to always work on. You can always get a little bit better on the speed of communication. Uh, repair costs, 39% evaluate their property managers on the repair costs. And that's super important. But I think one of the things that we want to look at is not just what the property management company is charging, but what the property management company's repair charges are compared to what it would be out in the open market. Because I know that most property management companies are getting discounts through Home Depot or Lowe's managed accounts. If they're large enough, they're getting best pricing from their vendors. If they're handling it with their in-house maintenance team, generally speaking, it's nearly impossible for an outside vendor to beat a competitive property management company's pricing. There are some vendors like flooring and sometimes the painters or landscapers will be able to beat property managers' cost, but not generally. And so I think it's not just, Oh, I'm getting charged a lot. Well, things cost a lot of money. Repairs cost a lot of money. So it's really good to make sure you're comparing apples to apples, but not only the repair cost, but the repair speed. This is kind of interesting too, because you've heard the triangle, right? Cost, speed, or quality, pick two. And it is a challenge to get things done cost-effectively while also getting them done fast. The faster you do them, usually you're sacrificing either some quality or some— it's costing more money or a little bit of both. So again, challenges there. 37% said that they're measuring their property managers on time to lease. That's super important, right? That's getting a tenant in, a good tenant at a good rate Um, and a short amount of time is what Centurion strives to do, what any good property management company should strive to do. And so super important, that really affects your bottom line, uh, the return on your investment there is getting your property occupied. Nothing costs more than a vacant property. Um, 35% of respondents said consider vacancy rates. So again, yeah, you want a time to lease that coincides with the vacancy rate. And if your vacancy rate is actually too low, it could be that you're not pushing rents enough, that you, you're not paying attention to the market rents. Second to last is fees with 31%. So We want fees to be reasonable. I will say though, you know, you can have your fees too low, and that might be shocking to hear, but the reality is, is it takes quite a bit of resources to effectively manage in a professional manner with good quality. You have to pay a decent amount to attract good staff, to keep good staff, to incentivize them. On behalf of the clients managing their property. You want good quality individuals managing what is usually your biggest and best asset. And so fees are important to keep an eye on those, though I think more likely than not you could be not paying enough because you wanna have good quality. I've done a number of rants in the past when you compare investment assets like stocks or bonds and you have a professional asset manager, they're usually charging 2 to 3 times what a property manager or asset manager for real estate, rental real estate is charging. I would argue that they're doing less, whereas a property manager, the property management is very labor-intensive and it's also, you have to know a lot. There's quite a bit of moving parts to this industry. And, um, but getting generally a third of the fees that a stock, for instance, stockbroker, stock manager might be getting. 28% said frequency of accounting errors was super important. And this is one that we have actually audits all along the process from beginning to end when we're doing anything accounting related, whether it's a repair ticket, a utility bill, sending out the owner reports, paying owners, and reconciling the client trust accounts, and then getting those audited. We have checks and balances everywhere. We balance everything to the penny every month. We have for 20 years. Um, but believe it or not, there is still, uh, accounting errors. Nobody is perfect in this industry. If they do, you should run. They're lying to you from the very get-go. But it is important to try to minimize the accounting errors. But the most important thing, in my opinion, is what a company does when an error is found. Are they going to make it right? Are they going to fix it? Are they going to be able to share why, with a good reason, like, why is there an error? Sometimes a very legitimate reason. And so I think that's important to clarify. Things that property managers are most commonly evaluated on by investor clients. So if there's different things that come to your mind, we'd love to hear. Drop a comment down below. And if you're interested in having Centurion manage your property, give us a call today. We'd love to talk with you. Thanks.
