What Does a Commercial Property Management Company Do?

Have you ever wondered what a commercial property management company does? Or better yet, what they should be doing?

If you’re asking either question and reading this article, then it’s safe to say you probably own commercial real estate or are considering purchasing commercial investment property. The answer to this question is simple, “Whatever you want them to do”. Ok, it’s not that simple. Practically speaking, the range of service varies quite a bit from company to company, depending on who you speak with. However, there are some basics that are essential and necessary regardless of your reason for needing or wanting professional property management. In this article you will find the answers to what you should expect from a commercial property management company.

The basics:

Accounting Services

Reporting- Monthly accounting reports that include, a balance sheet, income & expense statement, general ledger, rent-roll, rent ledger, expense ledger and a copy of the bank statement are the basics. There are various other reports you may want or need depending on the property and ownership type. For instance, with a self-storage property you will want in addition to the above, a copy of the audit and daily deposit report.

Narrative Report- This is a narrative monthly summary of exceptions in the budget, income and expenses or any unusual activity on your property, this report should be prepared by the property manager responsible for your property.

Collections (AR – Accounts Receivable) – Collecting rents and other monies owed. This function is generally considered an accounting function, until the point there is a problem (which is quite frequent these days). You will want a company that has a clearly defined process and system of responsibilities when it comes to collections, ask them, Who? – who will do what in the collection process. What? – what will be done. When? – when will it be done.

Payments (AP – Accounts Payable)- Now that they have collected your money, you will want them to pay the bills. Again, you will want them to clearly define, Who, What and When this will occur. You may want to define for the accounting staff the details on payment of your expenses, including when and how much to disburse to you, as well as other details such as reserves for taxes, insurance or capital improvements.

Lease Processing – This task is generally a group effort, with a defined patterned or specific routing to a number of people within the company, including the accounts receivable department and property manager. Each has a specific function and items they are looking for. However, one person generally inputs the lease into the computer. This part of the process is extremely important, as a missed date or dollar amount could result in serious repercussions down the road. Detail and a process that includes multiple layers of people checking the input process is Key.

Management Services

The Property Manager – This person is “One” of the focal points by which you make your decision on whether you hire a company or not. The property manager is the person that will make the critical day-to-day decisions that go into operating a property. Their responsibilities include – relationships with your Tenants and Vendors, physical condition of your property, oversight of the collection process, payment of bills, budgeting, lease administration, monthly reporting, generally all aspects of the operation of your commercial real estate. Most importantly they will be your contact and source of information about your real estate investment. Make sure you feel completely comfortable with this person and their abilities.

Site Visits – site visits are a critical part of any property management contract, minimally you want your property manager on your site once per month, weekly is preferred. Many things happen during the course of a week on a commercial property. The frequency of the managers’ visits will depend on the type of property they are overseeing. The purpose of the property managers’ visit will vary from property to property as well, however, here are a few tasks your manager should attend to while on your property:

Effective Marketing Strategies in Product Creation

Marketing includes matters such as pricing and packaging of the product and creation of demand by advertising and sales campaigns. There are other options, of course, like product creation, resale rights marketing, joint ventures and the likes, but they are merely secondary to the above.

If you take the freelance route, it is important to ensure that all rights to profit from the final product, or any materials produced in its making, remain yours. Bookkeeping, physical product creation or delivery of goods can be done better with specialized help. Determining the purpose of the product is vital in niche product creation.

Implementation of Methodology – The choice of implementation of Six Sigma methodology depends on whether development is required on existing processes (DMAIC) or on new process/product design creation (DMADV). Determining what you really want to sell, something that you can be relaxed selling is the first step at the creation of a niche product. With the technological advancements in the hosting industry, from automated control panels and scripts that simplify creation of accounts; to complete turnkey solutions, there is no excessive need to worry about spending time on the actual product sold to the customer.

For instance, you should be prepared to either perform yourself or to subcontract the completion of the following tasks:- Product idea research (are there any existing products or patents already existing for this idea)- Product specification document training (what it will do, how it will look, how will it be powered, and how the user will interface with it)- Marketing study (what it will be named, who would buy this, how much would they pay, how will we get customers to purchase the product)- Schematic or electronic circuit design process- Creation of a bill of material or BOM and an approved vendor’s list or AVL for each component in the design, preferably with multiple sources identified, with a BOM and AVL for each assembly level in the product- Printed circuit board layout design process (single sided board, double sided board, or multilayer board; size of the PCB; board material)- Mechanical packaging design with user interfaces (displays, buttons, switches, key. This removes all product creation costs from your budget as a marketer.

No other database of affiliate programs offers such a possibility for profit on either the affiliate side or the product creation site. Your chosen niche should allow for the creation of more than one product or service.

There are several marketing strategies that are necessary in the creation of a successful e-commerce web site – Email marketing (broadcasting) of prospects/customers – Effective use of auto responders (generate automatic email messages) – Online Newsletter – Online Form / Survey to capture your prospect’s email address – Electronic Product Delivery (if you sold a digital product) – Advertisement (Ad) Tracking – Back End Sales – Affiliate program etc.

Home Based Business Work – How to Overcome the Number 1 Problem

If you’ve ever done home based business work before, then you know that it really is work. There are several top companies as well as great products that you can try to sell, but the one constant in them all is the purchase of products or services. Some type of product/service must be purchased for you to make a profit. And in order to do that on a big level, you certainly must have leverage. So you can work your tail off and try to make as many one-on-one sales yourself or work smart and leverage your abilities and time by taking advantage of systems to replicate yourself into a sales force of many to sell more products and services to more people. Does that make sense?With home based business work, the problem lies here. People just don’t know how to effectively and inexpensively create that leverage to dramatically increase their results so they can achieve the amount of success they desire! If done right, you actually end up sacrificing less hours to get better results in less time.Now let me say that first of all, if you’ve been failing at home based business work for months now – or maybe even years – realize that it is not your fault. Myself and many other people have suffered with the exact same issues. You simply were never trained and for that reason never knew the right tactics of how to utilize the web and other tools to be successful. That’s like trying to do open-heart surgery after taking a few CPR lessons – it is specialized schooling. But in this case it will not cost you several $100,000′s to master the skills and tools required to become successful with your business; utilizing just a few crucial tools with the right marketing system & training will make your home based business profitable very quickly (depending on how much leverage you apply!).So here’s the number 1 issue with Home Based Business work: getting your business in front of enough interested and qualified people! Again it’s all about leverage – you want to get your message out to more people on a regular basis without spending lots of money or wasting precious time trying to sort through “suspects” one by one yourself (whether in person or on the phone, etc). The bigger your organization, the better your power to move more product and at the end of the day make more money.In order to build a group, you would prefer a system already in place that has the ability to pre-qualify and sort through your interested prospects on autopilot, notifying you of the more serious prospects so you know where you can spend your time for maximum results. Replicate yourself by developing a team to help reduce your Home Based Business work load and multiply your earnings. Show your organization how to utilize the system and how the people they recruit can do the same thing and once this occurs, you will have done a full cycle and completely replaced yourself while your income continues to expand.