Seeking Asset Management Best Practices for Multifamily Projects
Hi Monkeys,
Our team is struggling with transparency and efficiency in our asset management processes. I’ve been assigned to address this over the next quarter. We primarily focus on multifamily projects (~150 units each), and the markets we operate in are shifting weekly. We want to make data-backed decisions quickly and streamline how we monitor and manage our assets.
I’d appreciate your insights on the following:
- Textbooks or Resources: Are there any good books, guides, or resources that cover asset management SOPs or reporting standards specifically for multifamily real estate?
- Templates or Tools: Does anyone have a tracking sheet they use to monitor their assets? Do you personally fill this out, or is this typically handled by the property management team?
- Key Questions to Ask: I’m sure I’m missing important angles. What questions should I be asking to uncover inefficiencies and improve processes?
Any advice, examples, or resources would be hugely helpful. Thank you in advance for your help!
Bananas,
PinkBarbie
Very interested in answers to this - my firm is undergoing similar growing pains as we're holding assets for much longer than we typically have in the past due to elevated cap rates.
A lot of our problems seem to stem from the property management side of things. Across our portfolio we use 8 different firms, many of which care more about generating new business than retaining their current partners. We're currently looking to consolidate to 1-2 management firms across all properties in all markets and are going to thoroughly interview a few firms. We're hoping that the amount of business we're giving them will allow us to ask more of their teams in terms of data management and information. If they're managing 6,000 of our units, on top of another 5,000 units from other firms but in the same markets, they have all the info we do and should be able to give us accurate portfolio wide metrics right? Knowing property management firms this is still unlikely but we can always hope!
Regarding 2 - our current process is rough. Its a lot of data entry into a massive excel sheet for analysis purposes. We try to outsource this to the management companies as much as we can, having regionals or managers fill data out on a google sheet and porting it over, but often what they input is simply incorrect and requires just as much time verifying their data as it does to just do it ourselves.
Another thing that has been a huge help is we've outsourced some of the nitty gritty analysis. There's a few firms around the country that you can send your general ledgers, operating reports and etc. to and they'll go through it line by line highlighting things like "you're not charging residents for pest control here" or "your cleaning bill this week was double charged", or "the property managers is including this revenue item in their fee when they shouldn't be" etc. Its been a pretty huge help and we will likely by using their services once or twice a year on every property. ($2500 flat fee with free follow ups for the firm we've worked with)
If greystar is in any of the assets, fire them
Greystar is a lot of these assets and we can't wait to get rid of them. They have been so awful the past few years we're never going to go back.
Why has Greystar's PM business been bad? Are the unresponsive, high expenses? Also, are you willing to share the name of the firms that review the general ledgers, reports, etc.?
Not the OP but Greystar has had a few issues that I've seen from working with them:
What does that mean? How can you have markets that you operate in shift weekly?
1. Nothing that would really be worth the time for you to read. Resources include best in practice property management tools like knock (evaluates how well your team is doing at contacting prospects and managing the leasing workflows), the new AI tools (colleen.ai, eliseAI, etc.), Umbrelo. There are tons of good tools that, if implemented well, will improve site performance (though probably not worth the cost on C/D type buildings).
2. For the most part, your property management team should be providing the tracking information for your asset. In more sophisticated shops you'll have BI tools or dashboards that pull from Yardi or whatever accounting system you're using, but they require everyone using them to be on board with it and a lot of data integrity.
The property management team should be providing you weekly reports with the data you want, and then how to roll up that information is up to you.
3. The 4 Ps is a good place to start (people, pricing, product, promotion), and in my experience, it's almost always a people/product problem, and the product problem is really a people problem, just on the maintenance side vs. office staff.
Does anyone at your firm have property management experience? Many of the inefficiencies you'll be looking for are at the site level (they're not following up, or using automated prompts, closing out work orders without actually completing the work, etc.) and if you don't know to look for those things then it's going to be really hard to find them. If you don't, I'd recommend spending a few days at a property learning what each team member does (e.g., the AM usually handles delinquency) and how that reporting flows up to you.
When I have calls with properties I focus on the following items, hopefully this helps:
If your reporting focuses on getting good data on those items you'll cover most of it.
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