The Property Management Contract - What You Need to Know

The Property Management Contract - Taking it Apart

The manager will be taking on significant responsibilities with the owner's real estate. It is important to look at the contract and at a minimum it must

1. Name all parties to the contract

The Property Management Contract - What You Need to Know

2. The legal property address

3. Define the responsibilities of the manager and the owner

4. Enumerate all fees and commissions for leasing or real estate sales.

5. Define the term of the contract

6. Both parties must sign and date the contract

What is Agency?

"It may be referred to as the relationship between a principal and an agent whereby the principal, expressly or impliedly, authorizes the agent to work under his control and on his behalf. The agent is, thus, required to negotiate on behalf of the principal or bring him and third parties into contractual relationship."

Wikipedia

Basically you are signing off and binding the manager to act in your behalf and in your best interest regarding the management of the property.

The Take-away:

1. You should require a current license and go to search your state dept. of Real Estate to see if it is current and that there have not been any complaints or suspensions or revocations of the real estate license.

2. You should also check with your local Better Business Bureau and ask for referrals. 3. Finally, ask to see the general liability insurance policy and if the principals have errors and omissions insurance.

The length of the Contract: Often this is one or two years. Property Managers don't like a month to month contract because they need to get the tenants into the rent roll and into their system. They also need a little time to learn the property. One year should be a minimum.
The Take-away: Be sure that the contract can be voided, without having to provide reason and without penalty with a written 30 day notice to terminate the arrangement. Be sure that your written termination date matches the hire date or you may have a deduction for early termination. If the hire date was on the first, terminate on the first.

Duties and Responsibilities of Managers

1. Maintenance and Inspections: In a general sense they should perform all the duties necessary to maintain and manage the property. You may specify that certain tasks or procedures remain the owners to do. Many owners like to do their own maintenance.

The Take-away: Property management companies often have their own handyman and you should be very clear about how this works. If a light bulb is out and the handyman has to travel back and forth and change the bulbs, there is likely a minimum one hour charge. It could cost you .00 to change a light bulb.

2. Major Repairs: you should expect that all major repairs be completed with three independent bids and receipts to back up the billing.

Take-away: To protect yourself, you should establish limits on how much can be spent without having to get your approval. If the bids all seem high, we think you should have the right to bid it out yourself. If you do, you would then be responsible for the outcome and if it was not up to code, the management firm may not want to represent you. So, for those who know what they are doing, this might be a money saving option on big jobs.

3. Inspections: The manager should be there for all city inspections and without any charge. This is part of the management of the property.
Take away: you should have in writing that the company will also provide annual inspections and a written report.

4. 24 Hour emergency Service: This is part of basic management. There must be a 24 by 7 response team and there should be no extra charge for this. Its part of the basic manangement of a property.

Tenant Screening and leasing

1. Marketing and advertising the rental: The company should be familiar with the local market and be able to price the unit so that it rents reasonably fast and at the right rent. A poor rental process can cause you time on the market while all the bills still have to be paid. We have seen many companies try to hit home runs with getting the highest price only to be over zealous and cost the owner months of income.

The take-away: Ask the company how much leasing experience they have, how long a property is on the market. How to they come to their pricing strategies and how they intend to advertise, and are there any costs involved. We think that craigslist and a company website should do the job. With the exception of luxury properties, newspaper classifieds are a costly
expense.

2. Tenant Screening: What are the tenant screening criteria. he company should be able to clearly offer you a set of rules. This should never be an off hand "we pick em if we like em" approach. Thats a law suit waiting to happen. We will write on fair housing, the federal government's body of law governing housing and discrimination. meanwhile there are a series of articles at our website you can read if you need to know.

Financials:

All management companies should have accounts online and always available. The bigger companies will have an accountant in the company. Thats a plus.

The company responsibilities are:

1. Track income and expenses to determine profitability

2. Rents and other fees from the property shall be deposited into a special bank account or trust as required by law and cannot become mingled with the company funds.

Issue monthly income statements

3. Negotiate rental agreements

4. Respond to tenant requests and deal with problem tenants

5. The Agent should collect the rents and other income from the property promptly

6. From the rents received the Agent should pay all operating expenses and such other expenses as requested by the Owner. This may include the payment of mortgages or taxes.

Howard Bell for yourpropertypath.com

The Property Management Contract - What You Need to Know
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9 Management Philosophies to Develop Teams Into Elite High Performers

I met with a prospect the other day and he asked me "What do high performance managers do differently than average managers?"

I paused for a moment, scanned the long list of behaviors in my mind; distilled my answer down to the critical few things and told my prospect...

High performance managers:

9 Management Philosophies to Develop Teams Into Elite High Performers

clarify their understanding of their roles and responsibilities set non-conflicting short and long term priorities use a logical, transparent and duplicable decision-making process create a well thought out plan of action - they don't wing it create a realistic schedule for executing their plans

We discussed my answer in relation to the challenges his company was facing and agreed to involve the final person I needed to meet to close the deal.

I started the hour long drive back to the Atlanta airport and pondered a much deeper question.

Why do high performance managers behave the way they do?

I remembered asking my mentor and colleague Alex Nicholas, (the author of Applied Concepts Institutes' Sales Management Leadership Program), this very question.

Here's his answer - High performance managers have a set of management philosophies at the root of their priorities and decisions. This keeps them focused on achieving results through development of themselves, the team environment and individual team members.

All management behavior is based on daily, demonstrable, non-negotiable standards, values and ethics.

Personal conduct, decision-making and daily activities must consistently reflect the values and high ethical standards embodied by the company
Leadership skills focus on vision, strategy, values and spirit

Leadership includes communicating a clear direction for the team, in concert with the corporate vision, strategy, values and goals. Leadership also entails developing and executing longer term business plans and promoting a strong sense of the importance of individual and team contributions.
Management skills target tactical, shorter term development

Emphasis is on improving results by using proactive behavior, making sound tactical business decisions, improving near term planning, enhancing the daily work environment, and fostering developmental relationships with individual team members.
Focus on team development

The most important priority for managers is the development of an elite, high-performance team. While accommodating individual employee's needs are important, business and employee decisions should primarily be made to support the greater good of the team.

Team performance improvement begins with the manager's acceptance of personal responsibility for team actions and outcomes.

Improving team performance starts with improving one's self in personal management/leadership skills, job adaptability and business maturity.
The foundation of employee performance improvement is daily development that addresses their behavior.

All employees are recognized as having unique personalities. Management focuses primarily on developing employee behaviors that are required to successfully perform the job.
Communication between Managers and employees become more effective through a collaborative communication style.

Situations require differing styles of decision-making and communication, however collaborative communication and decision-making processes can be synergistic.
Develop employees using nurturing relationships

By consistently using a collaborative coaching process, managers help employees take personal ownership of the job and their productivity. Managers treat employees as "major accounts" for development and coach in the areas of job skills, business maturity and personal adaptability.
Improved employee productivity results in increased employee tenure and sense of self worth

Leading and managing employees to work through a focused, disciplined, high-energy, and consistent approach is the most effective way to increase results for the team and build employee job satisfaction and tenure.

So it all comes down to the congruency between your management practice and the value system that underpins the priorities you set and the decisions you make.

I would love to hear about the management philosophies that underpin your approach to making the numbers?

Add your voice to the discussion at my blog.

9 Management Philosophies to Develop Teams Into Elite High Performers
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Martice E Nicks Jr

Partner - Applied Concepts Institute, LLC

Professional Speaker, Master Sales Productivity Consultant, Coach and Trainer

Martice has 27 years as a successful consultant in government and private sectors. He focuses on optimizing and integrating systems that drive revenue and facilitate organizational performance. Martice has held multiple executive and management positions in companies including founding and self-directed teams. His approach brings a sense of urgency to drive positive behavioral change and most importantly-measurable business results. Clients realize between 15-30% increase in revenue in 90 days.

Come join the sales productivity discussion at my blog http://salesproductivitysecrets.blogspot.com/

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Human Resource Management and Organizational Effectiveness

1. Introduction

Organizational effectiveness depends on having the right people in the right jobs at the right time to meet rapidly changing organizational requirements. Right people can be obtained by performing the role of Human Resource (HR) function. Below is an outline and explanation of how to assess the HR functions of an organization by using HR activities in an architectural firm as an example. Human resource management (HRM), as defined by Bratton, J. & Gold, J. (2003), is

"A strategic approach to managing employment relations which emphasizes that leveraging people's capabilities is critical to achieving sustainable competitive advantage, this being achieved through a distinctive set of integrated employment policies, programmes and practices."

Human Resource Management and Organizational Effectiveness

According to this definition, we can see that human resource management should not merely handle recruitment, pay, and discharging, but also should maximize the use of an organization's human resources in a more strategic level. To describe what the HRM does in the organization, Ulrich, D. & Brocklebank, W. (2005) have outlined some of the HRM roles such as employee advocate, human capital developer, functional expert, strategic partner and HR leader etc.

An important aspect of an organization's business focus and direction towards achieving high levels of competency and competitiveness would depend very much upon their human resource management practices to contribute effectively towards profitability, quality, and other goals in line with the mission and vision of the company.

Staffing, training, compensation and performance management are basically important tools in the human resources practices that shape the organization's role in satisfying the needs of its stakeholders. Stakeholders of an organization comprise mainly of stockholders who will want to reap on their investments, customers whose wants and desires for high quality products or services are met, employees who want their jobs in the organization to be interesting with reasonable compensation and reward system and lastly, the community who would want the company to contribute and participate in activities and projects relating to the environmental issues. Common rules and procedures of human resource management must be adhered to by the organization which forms basic guidelines on its practices. Teamwork among lower levels of staff and the management should be created and maintained to assist in various angles that would deem necessary in eliminating communication breakdowns and foster better relationship among workers. The management should emphasize on good corporate culture in order to develop employees and create a positive and conducive work environment

Performance appraisal (PA) is one of the important components in the rational and systemic process of human resource management. The information obtained through performance appraisal provides foundations for recruiting and selecting new hires, training and development of existing staff, and motivating and maintaining a quality work force by adequately and properly rewarding their performance. Without a reliable performance appraisal system, a human resource management system falls apart, resulting in the total waste of the valuable human assets a company has.

There are two primary purposes of performance appraisal: evaluative and developmental. The evaluative purpose is intended to inform people of their performance standing. The collected performance data are frequently used to reward high performance and to punish poor performance. The developmental purpose is intended to identify problems in employees performing the assigned task. The collected performance data are used to provide necessary skill training or professional development.

2. Affirmative action has assisted many members of minority groups in creating equal opportunities in education and employment. Who could object to assisting these minorities, who suffered years of discrimination, in getting the equal opportunity they deserve? The problem is, affirmative action promotes racial preferences and quotas which cause mixed emotions. One time supporters of affirmative action are now calling out "reverse discrimination". If we want a stronger support for affirmative action we need to get rid of the preferential treatments.

The back bone of affirmative action began with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. The amendment abolished slavery and any involuntary labor, is showed there was a calling for equal opportunity for all South Africans.

A comprehensive Human Resource Strategy plays a vital role in the achievement of an organisation's overall strategic objectives and visibly illustrates that the human resources function fully understands and supports the direction in which the organisation is moving. A comprehensive HR Strategy will also support other specific strategic objectives undertaken by the marketing, financial, operational and technology departments.

In essence, an HR strategy should aim to capture "the people element" of what an organisation is hoping to achieve in the medium to long term, ensuring that:-

o it has the right people in place

o it has the right mix of skills

o employees display the right attitudes and behaviours, and

o employees are developed in the right way.

If, as is sometimes the case, organisation strategies and plans have been developed without any human resource input, the justification for the HR strategy may be more about teasing out the implicit people factors which are inherent in the plans, rather than simply summarising their explicit "people" content.

An HR strategy will add value to the organisation if it:

o articulates more clearly some of the common themes which lie behind the achievement of other plans and strategies, which have not been fully identified before; and

o identifies fundamental underlying issues which must be addressed by any organisation or business if its people are to be motivated, committed and operate effectively.

The first of these areas will entail a careful consideration of existing or developing plans and strategies to identify and draw attention to common themes and implications, which have not been made explicit previously.

The second area should be about identifying which of these plans and strategies are so fundamental that there must be clear plans to address them before the organisation can achieve on any of its goals. These are likely to include:

o workforce planning issues

o succession planning

o workforce skills plans

o employment equity plans

o black economic empowerment initiatives

o motivation and fair treatment issues

o pay levels designed to recruit, retain and motivate people

o the co-ordination of approaches to pay and grading across the organisation to create alignment and potential unequal pay claims

o a grading and remuneration system which is seen as fair and giving proper reward for contributions made

o wider employment issues which impact on staff recruitment, retention, motivation etc.

o a consistent performance management framework which is designed to meet the needs of all sectors of the organisation including its people

o career development frameworks which look at development within the organisation at equipping employees with "employability" so that they can cope with increasingly frequent changes in employer and employment patterns

o policies and frameworks to ensure that people development issues are addressed systematically: competence frameworks, self-managed learning etc.

The HR strategy will need to show that careful planning of the people issues will make it substantially easier for the organisation to achieve its wider strategic and operational goals.

In addition, the HR strategy can add value is by ensuring that, in all its other plans, the organisation takes account of and plans for changes in the wider environment, which are likely to have a major impact on the organisation, such as:

o changes in the overall employment market - demographic or remuneration levels

o cultural changes which will impact on future employment patterns

o changes in the employee relations climate

o changes in the legal framework surrounding employment

o HR and employment practice being developed in other organisations, such as new flexible work practices.

Finding the right opportunity to present a case for developing an HR Strategy is critical to ensuring that there will be support for the initiative, and that its initial value will be recognised by the organisation.

Giving a strong practical slant to the proposed strategy may help gain acceptance for the idea, such as focusing on good management practice. It is also important to build "early or quick wins" into any new strategy.

Other opportunities may present the ideal moment to encourage the development of an HR Strategy:-

o a major new internal initiative could present the right opportunity to push for an accompanying HR strategy, such as a restructuring exercise, a corporate acquisition, joint venture or merger exercise.

o a new externally generated initiative could similarly generate the right climate for a new HR strategy - e.g. Black economic empowerment initiatives.

o In some instances, even negative news may provide the "right moment", for example, recent industrial action or employee dissatisfaction expressed through a climate survey.

Human Resource Management and Organizational Effectiveness
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Span of Management

Also known as span of control, is a very important concept of organizing function of management. It refers to the number of subordinates that can be handled effectively by a superior in an organization. It signifies how the relations are planned between superior and subordinates in an organization.

Span of management is generally categorized under two heads- Narrow span and Wide span. Narrow Span of management means a single manager or supervisor oversees few subordinates. This gives rise to a tall organizational structure. While, a wide span of management means a single manager or supervisor oversees a large number of subordinates. This gives rise to a flat organizational structure.There is an inverse relation between the span of management and the number of hierarchical levels in an organization, i.e., narrow the span of management , greater the number of levels in an organization.

Narrow span of management is more costly compared to wide span of management as there are larger number of superiors/ managers and thus there is greater communication issues too between various management levels. The less geographically scattered the subordinates are, the better it is to have a wide span of management as it would be feasible for managers to be in touch with the subordinates and to explain them how to efficiently perform the tasks. In case of narrow span of management, there are comparatively more growth opportunities for a subordinate as the number of levels is more.

Span of Management

The more efficient and organized the managers are in performing their tasks, the better it is to have wide span of management for such organization. The less capable, motivated and confident the employees are, the better it is to have a narrow span of management so that the managers can spend time with them and supervise them well. The more standardized is the nature of tasks ,i.e., if same task can be performed using same inputs, the better it is to have a wide span of management as more number of subordinates can be supervised by a single superior. There is more flexibility, quick decision making, effective communication between top level and low level management,and improved customer interaction in case of wide span of management. Technological advancement such as mobile phones, mails, etc. makes it feasible for superiors to widen their span of management as there is more effective communication.

An optimal/ideal span of control according to the modern authors is fifteen to twenty subordinates per manager, while according to the traditional authors the ideal number is six subordinates per manager. But actually, an ideal span of control depends upon the nature of an organization, skills and capabilities of manager, the employees skills and abilities, the nature of job, the degree of interaction required between superior and subordinates.

Span of Management
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Author is the writer of www.managementstudyguide.com/organizing_function.htm which explains in detail about the organizing function of management and its important concepts.

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Basic Management Skills - What Makes a Good Manager?

Basic management skills are necessary to run a small business. Some business owners believe that leading vs managing is most important. In reality, you need to be able to both lead and manage.

What makes a good manager? There are definite business management styles and skills to focus on; specifically for small business owners. If you're the owner or manager of a small business, it's important to understand what those basic management skills are and to try to incorporate them into your own behaviors. Why? Because some skills are more successful than others and because some styles will engage your employees, while others will dis-engage them.

Business management skills such as planning, decision making, problem solving, controlling and directing, and measuring and reporting are needed for the daily operation.

Basic Management Skills - What Makes a Good Manager?

Using their small business plan, effective managers direct the business operation. Communications, benchmarking, tracking and measuring are tactics and strategies that they use to check their direction, to adjust the plan (if necessary), and to move the business forward. Good managers act to achieve the desired results; and they manage people and resources to get where they want to go.

Understanding what makes a good manager, means understanding what motivates employees.  How do you build an environment and culture that encourages employees to participate? How do you increase employee productivity and employee satisfaction; simultaneously? How do you recruit the best talent, and then keep them? How do you train your staff to solve problems, make decisions, and involve others in the process? These are just some of the challenges, and responsibilities, of managing.

As a manager, you need to understand what the common business management styles are (autocratic, paternalistic, democratic, and passive are the most common styles). And you need to understand what your style is, and how that style affects business results.

Four Business Management Styles:

Autocratic: The manager makes all the decisions; a "command and control" (militaristic) management style. Focus is on business; doesn't want any personal 'stuff' to get in the way. The benefit is that decisions are made quickly. The cost is in high employee turn-over as employees find this style difficult, and stressful. Paternalistic: The manager makes all decisions (or most of them) but focuses on what's best for employees. The benefit is that employees feel the business is taking care of them. The cost is that employees don't take care of business - they are uninvolved and have little at risk. Democratic: The manager wants input from the whole 'team' and majority rules. Often good decisions are made and employees feel involved in the business (the benefit to this style) but the process is very slow and you can't always make everyone happy. Passive: The manager abdicates responsibility to the employees; and calls it delegation. The benefit is that employees often step forward and learn in this environment. The cost is that the direction is scattered and there can be numerous false starts because there is no real manager.

Managers typically use more than one style, depending on the situation. If brainstorming creative new product ideas is today's focus, then the manager may want to use a democratic or passive style. If a decision about keeping or firing an under-performing employee must be made, the manager may need to use an autocratic or paternalistic style (hopefully not a democratic or passive style).

In most small businesses, the business owner is also the manager and the leader. In your business, make sure that you have a good understanding of your own business management styles, skills and qualities and learn how to control them and use them as necessary.

Basic Management Skills - What Makes a Good Manager?
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To understand more about what makes a good manager, or the difference between leading vs managing, it is good to focus on the qualities of an effective manager as compared to the qualities of an effective leader.
Kris Bovay is the owner of Voice Marketing Inc, a business and marketing services company. Kris has 25 years of experience in leading large, medium and small businesses. For more pricing strategies and other small business resources and services go to the more-for-small-business website.
Copyright 2008 - 2009 Voice Marketing Inc.

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