Multifamily Developers and Acquirers: What do you look for in property management firms?

experience, and to treat our money as their own. It is amazing to me when I look through a budget and ask the property manager questions about expenses and she has no idea what they are. In a case just last year, our utilities rolled over month to month for 5 months and we never found out until looking over the 2019 budget (yes, we should have realized there was a problem in our cashflows, but we had a lot going on and we were trusting our property managers to do their job) .... that is really what it comes down to, being able to trust the property manager. When I think about how closely I manage every expense in my personally owned real estate, I am amazed with our $70MM properties and the inefficiency I see. I am not in asset management, I am in acquisitions and development, but with the time I have spent doing asset management work, that is my 2 cents. The main issue is accountability, with the above mentioned property, the property manager is not the only person accountable for the management, the property management company also has a VP in charge of some of the expenses, because of this, there is not a single point of accountability, it lets them make excuses, it lets them not be embarrassed when they say, "give me a couple days to look into this and I will get back to you" ----- that is the biggest thing I never want to hear.

EDIT: We operate in suburban areas with lesser known companies, it would be interesting to experience Greystar's management, I have not yet, I imagine it is a lot better than what I have experienced. Even within property management companies, we have to fight to not get staffed with the bottom of their barrel (because we are a boutique developer, we cant throw any weight around)