Property Managers: What’s the Most Time-Consuming Part of Your Job?

Question

Property management involves much more than collecting rent and finding tenants. From handling maintenance requests to communicating with tenants and managing daily operations, there’s a lot to keep track of.

I’d love to hear from those working in property management:

• What takes up most of your time during a typical week?
• What’s the most frustrating or challenging part of managing properties?
• Are there any repetitive tasks you wish you could delegate or automate?

What takes up most of your time during a typical week?

What’s the most frustrating or challenging part of managing properties?

Are there any repetitive tasks you wish you could delegate or automate?

If you could eliminate one task from your daily workload, what would it be, and why?

I’m interested in hearing about your real-world experiences and the challenges you face in property management.

Simon W. · Answer

I'm on the accounting side, so I see this from the back office. For the PMs we work with, the thing that eats the most time is month-end. Chasing vendor invoices, matching them to work orders, getting the trust account reconciled, and then getting owner statements out that owners actually understand. One missing invoice or one repair coded to the wrong property and the whole statement gets held up, and then the owner calls asking where their money is.

Second is answering owner questions about their statement. A lot of that goes away when the statement is clear: gross rent, fees, each repair with the vendor name, then the net. When owners can see it, they stop calling.

If I could take one thing off a PM's plate it'd be the back and forth with vendors over missing or late invoices. Requiring an invoice with the property address and work order number before anything gets paid saves hours every month.

Alik Levin · Answer

They all are, all trillizillion of them. The trick is chipping away at the pile systematically and making a call on each task. Keep doing it as is, stop doing it and let it drop off my plate, or change it so my AI bot can pick it up and run with it.

Lorelai Germain · Answer

That’s a good example of how a small data issue can create a surprisingly long chain of extra work. One invoice coded to the wrong property isn’t just an accounting correction. Someone has to find it, the statement may be delayed, the owner may call, and then someone else has to explain what happened. I’d be curious how much staff time gets spent fixing the downstream effects of relatively small errors like that.

Property Managers: What’s the Most Time-Consuming Part of Your Job?

Property Managers: What’s the Most Time-Consuming Part of Your Job?

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