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In a tough market, more agencies are seeing the benefits of property management, the steady income it can bring and the importance of a strong rent roll.
REB speaks to two network heads to learn more about the why they’re turning to their PMs.
“What we’ve seen is the focus around the rent roll – the property management side of the business – to be equally as important, and the focus from the ownership of the business is shared between sales and property management,” LJ Hooker CEO Grant Harrod said.
Mr Harrod said LJ Hooker is going to be focusing more of their efforts on property management next year, as it is an important revenue stream in the current sales market.
“It’s no longer going to be all about sales and property management is just a poor cousin,” he said.
Mr Harrod said the future of real estate lies in bigger offices with stronger rent rolls, and more importance placed on training and supporting PMs alongside their sales peers.
“Going forward, we’re going to see larger offices with very large rent rolls and a very large focus around how to build and operate highly efficient property management businesses with, at the same time, highly success sales teams.”
Barry Plant is planning a similar focus. CEO Mike McCarthy said the network already provides extensive training for PMs, and they want to continue doing this and improving on it.
“On the property management side we run ... approximately 16 or 17 programs which are really focused on what property managers need to do to be successful and all the day-to-day tasks that they deal with themselves too,” Mr McCarthy said.
“In the last eight or nine years, we’ve had a really big focus on property management, even though we don’t get a fee from it, but of course we do get the auxiliary sales that do come off the property management as well so they obviously help our business. But we know they’re enormous help to the franchisee’s profitability and also building a capital asset for them as well.”
