Why You Should Hire a Busy Property Manager

There are so many good reasons to hire a property manager.

They find the best tenants, manage all the maintenance and repair issues, collect rent, give your property credibility...Basically, their job is to make your life easier. And who doesn’t want that?

When you’re getting ready to hire a property manager, there are all sorts of questions you need to ask yourself to ensure you make the right decision.

How many units are in their portfolio?

How far is your property from their office or the other properties they’re managing? (Hiring someone who’s just a short drive away is crucial; if it’s Friday at 5 p.m. and your property is flooding, you want someone who’s going to show up. If your property manager is 30 miles away, it’ll be a lot easier for them to push it off.)

What are their communication systems? Will they deliver weekly or monthly reports to let you know what’s happening at your property? Will they alert you when they make accounting deposits?

And speaking of communication, how easy are they to communicate with? Can you get in touch with them on the weekends? Do they give you real-time feedback on your property?

And what about how they communicate with tenants? Can they have the tough conversations, like convos about repairs, property damage, or eviction?

All these questions are super important to ask before you decide on a property manager. But there’s another question that’s just as important and that a lot of investors skip over during the hiring process — how busy are they?

When it comes to hiring a property manager, you might be tempted to hire someone who isn’t busy at all. And while that makes sense in theory (the fewer properties they have to manage, the more time they have to manage your property... right?), in practice, it’s always better to hire a property manager who’s got a lot going on.

Because the busiest property managers? They’re also the best.

Let’s take a look at the top reasons you should hire a busy property manager to manage your property:

1. Busy Property Managers Have Systems to Manage Their Busyness

When you hear the word “busy,” you probably associate it with the word “overbooked.” And “overbooked” typically translates to “way too much to get done on any given day.”

But “busy” and “overbooked” and two different things — and there are different types of busy you’ll want to look out for.

Typically, when a property manager is overbooked, they’re the kind of busy where they let things fall through the cracks. It takes them weeks to return a phone call, they have no structure in place for getting things done, they’re disorganized, they miss important deadlines and overlook important details... Basically, they’re a mess. And you want to avoid the “overbooked busy” property manager at all costs.

But there’s another kind of busy — and that’s the kind of busy that screams of efficiency. These are the property managers who have a lot on their plate, but they make it look easy.

They have systems and processes in place for managing their properties — and they're constantly improving and evolving those systems and processes to increase efficiency. They’re structured, they’re organized, they’re easy to communicate with... Basically, they’re the kind of property manager that gets the job done — no matter how long their to-do list might be.

Working with an “efficient busy” manager is the ideal situation; because they manage so many properties, they’ve got the process down to a science. They know exactly what to do, when to do it, and how to make sure everything gets done. They use their busyness as an opportunity to increase efficiency — and when you hire them, you’re the one who gets to reap the rewards.

2. Being Busy Says A Lot About Your Property Manager 

If they have a ton of properties in their portfolio, that says a lot of things about your property manager — and all of them are good.

When your property manager is busy, it means there’s a large roster of investors that trust them with their properties. It means their clients are satisfied with their work and refer them new business. It means they have a deep knowledge of the community and a strong network of vendors, contractors, and partners to help them get things done.

And when a property manager is busy, it also means they’re not going anywhere. When your property manager has a lot of clients, you can rest easy that they’re grounded in their business. They’ve got plenty of business to keep themselves going — so you don’t have to worry about them disappearing overnight and leaving you to deal with the hassle.

How LEAP Stays Busy Without Sacrificing Efficiency

Now, we’ll be honest — we are BUSY at LEAP. But we’ve spent years using that busyness as a way to continue to grow and better serve our clients — and have never let being busy stand in the way of being efficient.

At LEAP, we are ruthless about continuing to update, refine, and optimize our checklists, systems, and processes. No matter how good at your job you are, there’s always room for improvement — and we spend a lot of time, energy, and focus identifying those areas and making the changes necessary to consistently increase efficiency by developing and evolving these processes.

We’re also extremely selective about who we take on as clients. Just like investors have qualifications for us, we have qualifications for investors — and we’re not afraid to say no if we don’t feel like a client is a fit. By being choosy about who we work with, we can maximize our relationships with our existing clients and deliver the highest level of service — no matter how busy we might be.

And the last (and arguably most important) reason we’re able to stay extremely busy without sacrificing efficiency? Our amazing team. We put a huge focus on education and training, so just about everyone on our team has the skills and know-how to manage a property — which means they can all step in and help when things get hectic.

We’re busy at LEAP — and that’s because we’re also the best property managers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Get in touch today to learn more about how we can make your life easier (and more efficient!) with our property management services.