Landlords, what Key Performance Indicators do you track?

[Steve L.]

I am curious to see what other landlords track every month.  They say what you measure get results.

Our business aggressively tracks the following things:

1. Portfolios Pro Forma Rent - our main goal is to increase our pro forma rent by a certain monthly amount by the end of the year mostly via new acquisitions.  The reason we use pro forma versus actual as I buy many distressed properties that take 3-12 months to perform correctly.  I track this number at least weekly.

2. Revenue versus Expected Revenue - every month we make a spreadsheet that shows what each properties total potential rent is and a line item for the actual revenue was.  This basically lets me know what my vacancy and rent loss is.  My managers start getting bonuses at 92% portfolio wide and big bonuses if we are over 95%.  Properties that we just acquired or haven't been rented for the first time are not included.  We track this monthly. This report has really changed our business and aligns everyone's focus to what I think makes sense long-term.  

3. Weekly Vacancies / Eviction / Move-Out - pretty self explanatory.  

What items do you guys watch carefully?  

[Blair Poelman]

@Steve L.

Probably aren't getting a lot of response on this because its very unique to a lot of guys - and some of us are delusional enough to think we have some kind of secret sauce that we're not willing to share.

Also some of the metrics can be painful to look at (revisiting this on a Friday eve is somewhat of a weekend buzzkill :( 

I have a background in stats and data, so I track a lot some is super useful, other is just gee-whiz.  

Amongst several other points, here's some of what I look at weekly and /or monthly:

Rent amount due Vs. Collected
Amount that was actually received from each management co.
% of delinquent renters (at 15 days, 30 days, and 50 days) and avg. of how far behind those delinquencies are.  (as a side note, if a renter is more than 60 days behind there's a very little chance they will ever get current).
# of eviction notices delivered
Amount of lease re-ups
Amount of move-out notices at lease term 
% of tenants that deserve and receive their deposits upon vacating 
New vacancies
New tenancies
Avg. cost of getting a recently vacated unit rent-ready again

There are a lot more.

Also some of the data is difficult to get because it has to be manually gathered from leasing agents, customer service managers at the PM, and often times the data is delayed a few weeks as is in the case of how much is received from a PM - some send $$ on the 11th, others on the 15th, some not at all (those turkeys!)