When you’re the head of a team comprised of maintenance workers, external contractors, office staff, and more. It’s difficult to manage your own time with no distractions as a property manager, especially when someone else’s emergency becomes yours. That’s why as a property manager, you must handle exceptionally well the problems of others to meet your management objectives for the year, week, and day. By following these time-saving techniques you’ll be able to boost your management skills, and save time (and money):
1. Document all of your Interactions with Tenants.
This should be second nature for property managers.
To become more efficient, you first must document exactly what you do. You must measure how much time you spend on each project, not just how much time you spend. You must record how much time you spend on establishing listings, answering calls, showing properties, communicating with contractors, and so on. It may be unpleasant, but you should record a full week of work to get a better sense of how much time you spend. This can be facilitated with our next strategy.
2. Scheduling Your Time
Your “to-dos” don’t exist outside of your thoughts if you don’t employ a scheduling system.
You are more likely to experience stress and overwhelm from attempting to remember all you need to do if you store more items in your head (instead of on your schedule).
By adding it to your calendar, you’ll be able to focus on the one thing that needs to be done right away rather than worrying about everything else.
3. Divide Your Tasks Into Time Blocks
Gary Keller built Keller Williams into a real estate powerhouse by understanding the power of “The One Thing.” Anyone in the real estate industry should read his best-selling book.
Stop multitasking and start concentrating on one thing at a time.
When you’re a smaller company and have to put out fires, this can be difficult, but it should be your first goal to hire someone to handle those issues.
Begin batching all of your rental listings into one block of time so you can get into a workflow. Task switching (multitasking) is inefficient for property managers or anyone else, according to scientific studies.
4. Establish A System For Making Notes
How often do you have the idea, “Oh, I need to do that!” come to mind?
The phone rings and the next thing you know, you’re putting out some kind of fire, and you forget about that thought or idea. Later on, you’re searching your brain trying to recall the one thing you overlooked.
That’s why you should put together a strategy for taking notes. You may accomplish this using the Notes app on your phone (iOS or Android), Google Keep, Evernote, or any app note-taking app that suits you.
Check your notes and add them to your calendar before you clock out at the end of the day.
This will provide you peace of mind after your day is over while also assisting you in avoiding dropping the ball.
5. Make A Pre-Screening Survey
Many property managers will say that screening tenants is the most time-consuming aspect of their job.
You’ve got a lot to do, and one of the most time-consuming tasks is dealing with phone calls and emails from unqualified tenants.
Your criteria were listed in your rental listing, but they were not read. They don’t even meet your minimum salary requirements for consideration, but they reach out anyway.
You can weed out these people by adding a Google Form survey to your rental listings and requiring people to complete it to be considered.
6. Include a photo of your rental criteria in your listings.
Many renters will look at the location, price, and photos before getting in touch with you. Most times they won’t bother reading your listing details to find out more.
This means they don’t read about your minimum requirements, such as your pet policy, income requirements, and smoking policy.
One simple solution is to take a screenshot of your criteria and convert it into a photo. Add that photo to your listing, preferably as the second photo of your listing, so that when they scroll through, they are forced to see your criteria.
7. Communicate With Staff
Whether it’s a 10-minute meeting or a longer one, making sure everyone on your team is aware of the plans for the day is a great approach to ensure that duties are given, assistance is available, and everyone is prepared to proceed without hindrances.
Everyone will benefit now and later from giving questions, concerns, and clarifications earlier in the day.
8. Outsource Time-consuming and Repetitive Tasks
A Virtual Assistant (VA), which can be a person or team, can provide great help by handling everyday tasks like responding to general inquiries, sales, or anything you can train them in, like posting all of your listings, responding to rental requests, and even answer the phone.
Just keep in mind that in some states, the property manager is required to perform specific tasks that cannot be outsourced.
9. Approach Large Tasks First
We’re all guilty of putting off larger or more vexing tasks or projects because it can be difficult to get started on these types of projects at times.
One way to ensure you start is to achieve and celebrate small victories early in the process. Begin with the simplest aspect of the project first. The small victory of completing that first task or project will provide momentum for larger projects.
In tackling a large project, your momentum and satisfaction are important motivators. Have trouble getting started? Need help from a professional Full-Service contractor with over a decade of experience?
