Property Managers are no longer the young and inexperienced “poor cousins of sales” and neither are they overwhelmed, beleaguered or disempowered.
They’re not victims or superheroes either.
Instead, they are tenured and experienced professionals who work hard, embrace complexity and deliver positive business impacts for owners and their clients.
This is what MRI Software’s Dr Sarah Bell, believes, and this changing perception of property managers is a key finding in the group’s 2024 Voice of the Property Manager (VOPM) Survey – the third since 2018.
MRI’s director of strategic partnerships, Dr Bell, is passionate about such changes and particularly about moving forward from the “dated and silly” narrative around property management – just one of which is seeing them as superheroes or victims.
“Calling property managers superheroes absolutely conflates (this narrative) and minimises them in a way I’ve never been comfortable with,” Dr Bell said.
“It’s been too easy to pretend that property managers are just superheroes and this is such a tough job rather than saying, ‘No, it’s a complex job and needs a professional who absolutely earns their esteem by doing work that is not easy and that they don’t find easy’.”
Empowering property managers further, the 2024 VOPM survey highlighted that property management’s revenue generation now had equal weighting to that of sales.
According to Macquarie Bank’s 2023 Benchmarking Report data, the survey showed property management represents 48 per cent of revenue generation within real estate businesses – just 1% less than sales and a strong increase from property management’s 29 per cent figure in 2007.
In these ways, this “meat in the sandwich” industry has achieved an impressive maturity which not even a global pandemic could impair.
Key findings
Other key findings in the VOPM Survey showed satisfaction with role flexibility and company care was still very high at 74 per cent and 73 per cent respectively.
Fifty-two per cent of property managers said they intended to stay in the industry with 53 per cent happy with their career opportunities.
However, those who recommend working in property management are slightly down from the 2021 survey (39 per cent as opposed to 44 per cent) while the 29 per cent who want to leave the industry is up from 23 per cent in 2021 and 12 per cent in 2018.
Dr Bell said these negative trends – and the latter one in particular – should be a “wake-up call” for the real estate industry overall.
“This (trend) echoes, I think, certainly, the sentiment that I’ve experienced around how difficult it is to recruit and retain great talent to the industry, so it feels like there’s quite a negative perception about the job from the industry,” Dr Bell said.
However, she was quick to add that multiple signs of change and maturity in the property management industry countered such negative trends, with the figures for flexibility satisfaction and company care unlikely to be found in other industries.
Aggression and abuse continue
Disturbing incidents caused by behaviour of both tenants and landlords have decreased to 53 per cent from 60 per cent in 2021.
Dr Bell said while she appreciated the “very welcome reduction,” 53 per cent was still too high.
“This (issue) is something I think we need to get better at, or to understand much better that it is a part of the job and that it needs to be supported by appropriate conflict training, by appropriate emotional support for the emotional labour that goes into dealing with those things we require,” she said.
“We require space and tooling to support people through that, if that’s going to be such a persistent and pervasive aspect of the work.”
Dr Bell said a major reason for such abuse was cost-of-living pressures and interest rates – and opposed to a common misconception, landlords were not immune to these issues.
“Landlords’ domestic bills are increasing as well as interest rates so for landlords, potentially, there’s been a double hit, in terms of that crunch,” she said.
As for tenants, Dr Bell said there was a link between financial stress and behaviour, and accommodation was one of the most basic human needs.
“So if rent, or the access to secure accommodation, is threatened by these external drivers that that plays out in a way that is not ideal for the tenant experiencing it and for the property manager dealing with the output of that,” she said.
Strategies for increasing property manager, investor and renter satisfaction
Leah Jay general manager, Cassandra Lantry, concurs with Dr Bell that property managers are asked to “wear a dozen different hats at the one time.”
This is a major reason why the Newcastle-based group encourages its employees to take off at least some of these hats, particularly those in the administration and compliance space.
“This allows property managers to do what they do best and they love the most and that is, working with their clients and building relationships,” Ms Lantry said.
In this way, Leah Jay property managers can also increase investor and renter satisfaction.
Ms Lantry explained that Leah Jay spent a lot of time offering “human skills” support and training to its team.
This included communication responsiveness, conflict resolution, negotiation and relationship building as well as training sessions, role plays and case studies.
Ms Lantry said that Leah Jay also offers an advisory board-style team of senior property managers who volunteer their time to offer advice and support for employees with “particularly curly issues.”
And, employees have team leaders they can go to if they need to “download.”
“This is something that’s used a lot within the business because it’s that practical in-the-moment support when they need it, but it’s really relevant as well,” she said.
Ms Lantry added that Leah Jay focused on “creating good boundaries” and encouraged its employees to leave work – and their mental stressors – behind when they left the office every day.
“Whatever that brain break is, or that circuit breaker in your day – for some people, it might be going to the gym, for some it’s listening to a podcast, or whatever their little trigger is – (it’s about) making sure everybody’s (got) that switch-off time,” Ms Lantry said.
“We really need to be able to train ourselves and our brains to just switch off when we need to, especially in healthy habits.”
Ms Lantry admitted that property management overall is not without its challenges.
“But we do feel like there’s a little bit of a light at the end of the tunnel, if you’re prepared to change and try things and think differently, and communicate with your team about what’s meaningful to them as well,” she said.
The full Voice of the Property Manager report is available for download here.
