Scaling a property management business is not easy. Especially in highly competitive markets, real estate investors are trying to shop on price, services, and convenience. Meanwhile, you’re trying to make sure you’re selecting the right clients and maintaining a high enough profit margin to sustain your business. That leaves a lot of PMs unsure of exactly how to grow a property management company in a healthy way with a long-term vision.
Many property managers think of growth purely in terms of their go-to-market strategy and acquiring more doors, but in reality, sustainable growth is heavily dependent on internal efforts. You need to be hiring the right staff, ensuring the best resident experience, and building out razor-sharp processes to support it all.
In this article, we’ll walk you through eight key tips for growing your property management company in a way that sets you up for long-term success.
Growth isn’t just a single aspect of your business; it’s a culmination of all your different efforts. It requires you to market yourself well and find the right clients, but it also incorporates your staff and hiring standards, your company’s reputation, and your mindset as a leader.
Especially in the early stages of expansion, it can be tempting to take a grow-at-all-costs approach. You want to say yes to every single potential client and add as many doors as possible to your portfolio. The problem with that is the long-term impact; when you have clients who don’t fit your company or your system, they end up draining resources from your team. They take more energy and investment to maintain than is sustainable for a growing business.
Instead, try to be selective about the investors you’re bringing onboard. Start to get specific about the types of owners you want to work with. For example, do you want to work with dedicated investors or accidental landlords? Single-family properties or multi-family buildings? What about owners who also have commercial or multi-use properties?
Once you’ve got the basic parameters in place, aim to document the standards that investors must meet in order to work with you. Do they have sufficient cash reserves? Do they have the mindset of a buy-and-hold investor? Are they aligned with your vision for how you’ll manage their property?
When you have a portfolio full of properties and owners that work within your system, you’ll be able to focus less energy on catering to them and spend more time growing your business.
Another key step in building a strong business is thinking like an owner. As you build out your service package, make sure you’re really putting yourselves in the shoes of the owner. What services are going to provide the most value to them? What are the property tasks that they most want taken off their plates? There are some basic items that you’ve probably already considered:
But beyond that, think about some more value-adding services that might not come standard with all property managers:
Any value-adding services that you can include in your service package can help you stand out from the competition and win more deals with new investors.
Absentee owners are a great source for new client leads. These are people who own a home or homes that they don’t occupy. While that’s not a guarantee that they’re renting out the property, it’s certainly a good possibility. By targeting absentee owners with your messaging and outreach, you can be much more specific and spend a whole lot less money than just sending mailers out to all homeowners in your area.
Identifying absentee owners is actually a simpler process than you’d expect. Because property ownership and taxes are all public record, you can pull a list of property owners and their residential addresses, and then compare to see who owns property that they don’t live in. It takes a little bit of time investment, but it can save you money down the line.
Everyone knows the three most important factors in real estate: location, location, location. Make sure that you’re doing as much as you can to position yourself as a local business working with the local community. For example, make sure that your Google Business page (and any similar listings like Yelp or Facebook) clearly list your company address accurately. This will help capture anyone searching for local property management services.
You can also work on optimizing your website for local searches. When local property investors are looking for managers, they’ll often search Google for terms like “property managers near me,” “local property management companies” or “property management in Miami”. You want to make sure your website is optimized to capture these searches.
You can also set up Google ads so that your company is displayed right at the top of the results when people run these searches. SEO is free while Google Ads cost money, but some balance of the two is often the most productive way to capture new leads.
While hiring staff members may seem somewhat separate from business growth, they’re actually deeply intertwined.
First off, having the right people on your team is going to better position you to both acquire and retain clients. If you don’t have the right staff there to support your clients through the sales, onboarding, and retention process, you’re going to struggle to grow. Second, as you do grow, you’re going to need to continue adding staff to support those new doors. You want to make sure you have a robust hiring methodology in place so that you can identify great talent and bring them into your team quickly.
In a service-focused industry like property management, your reputation is your life blood. You need to make sure you’re actively managing that reputation in order to keep your company’s go-to-market strategy healthy and thriving.
The first pillar of a great reputation is simply delivering exceptional service. You’re going to be known for the service that you deliver one way or another, so you should be doing everything in your power to make sure that it’s top-tier. Whether that means going above and beyond, hiring the right vendors, or answering the phone during off hours, it’s going to impact how your customers perceive you.
The second pillar of reputation is asking happy customers and residents for reviews. Online reviews across Yelp, Google, Facebook and more can help potential customers better understand where you’re meeting and exceeding customer expectations. One of the first things potential clients will do when they discover your company is look for reviews, so make sure there are high-quality, positive comments there to read.
Another key to scaling your business is maintaining firm boundaries. If you want a company that can grow effectively, you need to maintain a clear scope of work and have conviction in the work you do and don’t do. Catering to each owner’s individual needs and requests can cause your team to get bogged down and decrease efficiency throughout the organization.
When you stick to the scope of work that you agreed to and don’t make exceptions for individual clients, it supports scalability and helps weed out owners who are a poor fit.
One final element that’s vital to growing a business is gaining a comprehensive understanding of the competitive landscape. Analyzing your competitors will help you identify ways for your company to stand out. Take the time to put together battlecards or talking points on your competition. Look through their website, their service offering, and any public reviews to see where you can position yourself as the better option.
Adding services like a Resident Benefits Package can help you differentiate yourself even more. With benefits like a filter delivery service that protects HVAC systems, or resident rewards that incentivize on-time payments, an RBP can help tip the scales in conversations with owners.
Second Nature’s goal is to make renting easier for residents, owners, and property managers alike. Our RBP drives resident retention, saves time traditionally spent on pest control and insurance management, and sets your company up for long-term success.
If you want to learn more about how an RBP could set your business apart, schedule a demo with a member of our team today.