Analyzing Property Management Company Operations: How Do They Work?

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You have a lot of responsibilities on your plate as a landlord. From collecting rent to dealing with tenant issues and keeping up with property maintenance, it’s near impossible to stay afloat if this isn’t your full-time job, and if you have any plans of expanding your real estate portfolio.

That’s why most landlords will hire professional help to manage their rentals. These third-party management teams are called property management companies (PMCs) who can run your rental business on your behalf in exchange for a percentage of your rental income.

But how exactly do these PMCs operate? How does a good PMC differ from a bad one?

We’re a PMC operating in Metro Detroit for more than 2 decades now, so we can tell you everything that happens in one. We’ll reveal everything that happens under the hood, so you know what to look for when scouting for a PMC to manage your rental properties.

What Should a PMC Do For You?

A PMC will deal with the following things so you don’t have to worry about them anymore:

• - Manage your rental calendar
• - Ensure that your tenant turnover is timely
• - Market your rentals
• - Deal directly with prospects and existing tenants
• - Clean properties during vacancies
• - Collecting all the rent
• - Handle maintenance and repair issues regularly
• - Respond and resolve tenant complaints and problems
• - Pursuing past due tenants and evictions whenever necessary

They’ll also bring the know-how to manage your rental properties, so you have peace of mind knowing that your hard-earned assets are in good hands. They are also an independent contractor so you don’t have the hassles of being an employer.

When Should You Hire a PMC?

If you’re unsure whether to manage your properties alone or hire third-party help, here’s when you should opt to hire a PMC (and make the most out of it). Hire a PMC if:

• - You have an extensive portfolio of rentals
• - You don’t live near your rental properties
• - You’re not interested or experienced with hands-on management
• - You have limited time and resources
• - You can afford the cost of hiring a PMC
• - You’re overwhelmed with management tasks
• - You don’t want to be an employer
• - Your property is part of an affordable housing program
• - You’re too nice and can’t deal with tenants

Any of these reasons will make hiring a PMC a good idea. Plus, the more you resonate with these situations, the more you can get the most bang for your buck out of hiring a PMC.

What are the Differences Between Good and Bad PMCs?

As with most organizations in the world, not all PMCs are created equal. In fact, most of them vary wildly in operations and prioritization within their company.

For you to be confident that you’re hiring the right partner for your investments, here is a side-by-side chart that compares what a good PMC will have versus what a bad PMC will have:

In a nutshell, you want a PMC that will go beyond basic requirements and give you the best possible service you can receive. You want a PMC that’ll go over-the-top with their offerings and coverage, which means you need to screen each of your options thoroughly before you commit to working with one.

If not, working with a bad PMC will only make things way more complicated.

What Would a Good Service Look Like?

As we mentioned before, we’re a property management company in Metro Detroit that has been managing a wide array of rental properties for over 2 decades. And after handling multiple portfolios all this time, we’ve calibrated our services to what makes a good PMC as much as possible.

We’ll share one example for you to see how we operate regarding our call volumes.

We regularly monitor our call volumes to see how we can best adjust our resources according to demand. These reports tell us what times of the day and days of the week we get the most calls, so we can organize and maximize our team for the greatest call coverage, ultimately improving our client services.

Here’s what our call volumes look like for the past month:

• - Week 1: Tuesday (29 calls) and Wednesday (27 calls) had the most calls coming in, especially after dinner time and into the early hours of the next morning.
• - Week 2: Monday (30 calls) and Tuesday (34 calls) had the most calls coming in, particularly during after-office hours for most people.
• - Week 3: Tuesday (32 calls) and Friday (31 calls) had the most calls coming in, where the bulk of the calls came in after normal business hours.
• - Week 4: Monday (40 calls), Tuesday (37 calls), and Wednesday (35 calls) had the most calls coming in, mainly at midnight of each day.

After collecting this data, we saw that our clients need our help the most during the night time and into the wee hours of the morning. Plus, they will usually reach out to us from Monday to Wednesday. From knowing this, we were able to assign more admins to peak times and utilize our employee base.

Should you want to visualize the information we collected, here are a couple of screenshots of our charts:

Moreover, we checked all of our missed calls to identify our weaknesses. We don’t want even one landlord to have a difficult time reaching us.

Based on the data, we saw that we had the most call volume primarily in the second half of the month, so we’ve adjusted our resources accordingly to ensure that we’ve got everybody covered:

This is just how we handle our call volumes. By collecting and analyzing these reports, we always have enough staff addressing tenant issues as quickly as possible. And these are only our call volumes—imagine how over-the-top we can get when we handle your property inspections, maintenance and repairs, and other PMC-related tasks!

Hire Someone Who’ll Go Above and Beyond

In summary, a good PMC prioritizes continuous improvement, stays updated with regulations, proactively handles maintenance and tenant management, offers personalized services for the largest of portfolios, incorporates efficient processes, and leverages data collection, record keeping, and analysis.

Here at Logical Property Management, we do exactly all those things.

Our call volume analysis alone should show you how above and beyond we go in serving our clients. Our goal is to provide landlords with the management services they’ve been dreaming of, so they can establish and scale their rental investments with ease.

We’re not skimping on anything that’ll give you any less.

Are you looking for a good rental property management company? Our team of experts is up for the challenge. We’re equipped, experienced, and excited to start working with you toward your success, handling your rental properties like a well-oiled machine.