That’s right, strange as it may seem, I’ve been looking for months to hire an on-site apartment manager with some maintenance skills and an apartment maintenance technician.  You would think with so many people out of work in this country that there would be a long line of qualified applicants for these two positions but there doesn’t seem to be.  To make it even more difficult, there is a lot of alcohol and drug abuse amongst the people who gravitate towards on-site apartment community positions.  I not only need to find a qualified candidate, I must also find a sober candidate.  The question for most property management firms has been how to attract and retain the most qualified candidates. While I’m struggling to make these hires today I’ve been pretty successful in locating candidates in the past.

To find qualified candidates a property management firm must go beyond advertising in the newspaper or on Internet employment message boards.  While these do draw applicants, most of the people who do send in resumes will have little or no experience.  Usually, with such advertising you will attract people who are trying to transition from one industry to another and who have hopes that their skills will be transferable as well.  Unfortunately, it is very seldom that a person who does maintenance in an office building or hotel will be qualified to do make readies in an apartment community.   Likewise, a manager in any other discipline will not have the skill set to manage an apartment community.

To find qualified candidates for apartment communities you must go into the communities themselves.  Sometimes, this is a covert action with a visit to a community to look at what is available for lease.  While the manager is showing the units, conversation is steered towards their job and whether they are happy.  Hypothetical questions can be asked about the “what if a new position were to come available”.  It is not unusual for a leasing prospect to ask to speak with the on-site maintenance person.  This offers similar possibilities to interact and see if the person “is looking”.  A lease covert way is to have staff members start calling apartment communities and introducing themselves and their firm and then directly asking if the on-site staff knows of anybody who might be looking for a community position.  The immediate answer is usually no, but within a few days there are always some returning calls wanting to know more about the position.

Blogs, Twitter and Facebook can be a great help when networking to find qualified prospects.  Think of the number of people who are reached with each of these postings.  Another way to locate good prospects is to network with your peers.
If you belong to an apartment association you can always attend functions and mention your need while socializing with others.  Other alternatives to this are networking groups like the Chamber of Commerce or Rotary Club.  More removed from the industry but still a good possibility is discussions with friends and family since people in their spheres of influence may have been networking with them looking for leads on employment.

The final way to locate a qualified candidate is to enlist the aid of a placement service.  There are several in the industry that specialize in the placement of apartment community personnel.  While there is a cost associated with this and some apartment community owners are adverse to spending money to locate help, it is in some cases the only viable way to locate the appropriate candidate.

Edward Boyle

CEO, Employing Broker

Katchen Company

Katchen Company, founded in 1962, is an integrated real estate company with its corporate headquarters in Lakewood, Colorado.  The company offers real estate development, redevelopment, property management, brokerage, consulting services, construction oversight and maintenance services to individual and institutional real estate investors throughout the greater Denver metropolitan area in Denver with satellite offices in Chicago, Las Vegas and Miami market areas.

Perusing the newspaper last night I came across an article heading stating that thirty percent of the United States population had been arrested at least once by the age of twenty-three.  While I read no further to find the basis of this disheartening fact I nodded knowingly as I am only too aware of these statistics.  Owning a real estate firm that provides property management services to apartment communities has exposed me to the realities of the world in which we live.  Through the background reports on prospective residents I have been surprised, astonished and at time appalled by peoples rental, credit and criminal histories.

Therein lays a dilemma for anyone who is responsible for determining the acceptability of an applicant for residency.  Access to this very personal information comes with great risk and responsibility.  The information within a background report could not only harm the applicant’s financial wellbeing but also alter the public’s opinion of the applicant if the documents were to get into a dubious individuals possession.  While rules and regulations are in place to govern who can gain access to background information, how those individuals use the information obtained and how that information is then secured it is not very well monitored.

For apartment community owners who self-manage, they take on the whole risk of securing these documents and for those who hire a third-party property management firm they share the risk.  This shared risk makes it even more important
that the property owner to know how their property management firm is using and controlling the documents.  As an agent for the property owner the management firm is performing services on behalf of the owner and the owner is directly responsible for any actions taken by the management firm.  For this reason an owner should take precautions to protect themselves by hiring only experienced professional property management and then hiring a consulting firm to audit the
management firm on a yearly basis.

Edward Boyle

CEO, Employing Broker

Katchen Company

Katchen Company, founded in 1962, is an integrated real estate company with its corporate headquarters in Lakewood, Colorado.  The company offers real estate development, redevelopment, property management, brokerage, consulting services, construction oversight and maintenance services to individual and institutional real estate investors throughout the greater Denver metropolitan area in Denver with satellite offices in Chicago, Las Vegas and Miami market areas.

You may be wondering what preachers, teachers and lawyers have in common and why I would choose to use them as a title for a blog.   The only real thing that they have in common is that my World War II veteran father use to say never trust preachers, teachers and lawyers.  Hardened by the war my father was pretty skeptical and opinionated.  However, he was too far off the mark about preachers as we seen played out over the years on the news.  You know the type, preach about some commandment on Sunday and then break the commandment on Monday.  My father really didn’t have much respect for teachers either.  He would say, “Those that can do and those that can’t teach.”  While I found what he said funny I really didn’t understand why he wouldn’t trust a teacher.  That was, until I had a child of my own.  It was at that point that I understood why my father had his concerns.  What he meant was never trust you child’s upbringing to a teacher.  If a parent wants their child to have sound principles and values they need to take a leadership role and not leave such matters to a teacher’s discretion.  What can I say about a lawyer which hasn’t already been said?  Probably nothing, suffice it to say that my father felt if a lawyer was involved in a dispute the only person who was going to win was the lawyer.

So how does all of this relate to business and more precise, the real estate business?  I believe the topic is preconceived notions and trust.  It is obvious that my father had preconceived ideas about preachers, teachers and lawyers and decided that they couldn’t be trusted.  However, in the real estate business there isn’t that luxury, one has to avoid any preconceived notions, i.e. prejudices when dealing with the general public.  It is not just good business practice, in some cases it is the law.  Enough said.  Trust is a little more difficult to address because the term is thrown around loosely by real estate professionals when they talk about making business decisions.  For instance, looking at a prospective tenant’s application to rent a property, the property owner questions whether they can trust the prospective tenant to make timely payment of the rent each month.  A review of the prospective tenant’s credit history may provide the answer and if not, a call to a previous landlord may help.  So, the question really isn’t one of trusting the prospective tenant even though that may be the word used in conversation.  The question is whether the prospective tenant qualifies based upon a set of criteria that was established prior to marketing the property.  Based upon that information is there a pattern of practice that would lead the property owner to believe the rent will be paid.  The credit information is history and doesn’t foretell the future, so perhaps when a property owner signs a lease contract with a prospective tenant they are indeed trusting that they will pay the rent.

Edward Boyle

CEO, Employing Broker

Katchen Company

Katchen Company, founded in 1962, is an integrated real estate company with its corporate headquarters in Lakewood, Colorado. The company offers real estate development, redevelopment, property management, brokerage, consulting services, construction oversight and maintenance services to individual and institutional real estate investors throughout the greater Denver metropolitan area in Denver with satellite offices in Chicago, Las Vegas and Miami market areas.

After the events of the last few months in Washington DC you might think that I’m suggesting we throw out all the inept politicians, however, while I’d certainly like to voice my feelings regarding spending and taxes I’ll leave that debate to the “talking heads” that make a living through biased reporting of the facts.  Instead, today I’m writing about the enforcement of commercial property leases.

In the last couple of years I’ve seen a growing tendency of property owners being reluctant to enforce their leases because they fear the potential loss of revenue in the event such action leads to an eviction.  This is hardly new ground for most
owner/investors as vacancy is just one of the many costs of doing business.  Lease enforcement falls into two distinct categories, 1) payment of financial obligations and 2) rules of operational behavior.

The first category, payment of financial obligations, seems like a straight forward issue but in an economic environment where even the best businesses are struggling there are no easy answers.  It usually starts with a good tenant being
slow in paying their rent and other fees due. The due date goes by and the owner’s representative posts the delinquent party with a demand for current obligations plus late fees.  It is obvious that unless something extraordinary occurs the next month’s financial obligations will be as late or later.  Over a series of months the leasing party gets further and further behind until payment of the month’s financial obligations is made at the very end of the month or not at all.  The owner’s representative is ready to enforce the lease and process for eviction but the owner is reluctant to proceed.   The owner reasons that perhaps if the leasing party is given a little time they will be able to get caught up and because it is easier to maintain an existing tenant then to obtain a new on the owner decides to delay lease enforcement. Several months without the tenant’s payment starts to place a burden on the property as other tenants hear through the “grape vine” that the tenant isn’t paying rent and no action is being taken. Slowly other tenants begin to make their payments later in the month, possibly because they are also having financial issues but likely also that they are aware that the owner is reluctant to enforce payment.  The owner has placed the property’s operation into a very precarious position.  As a property owner and property manager my opinion has always been to throw the bums out if they don’t pay.   By doing so you make a statement to the other tenants but you also maintain the integrity of the property’s lease document.

The second category, rules of operational behavior, isn’t as easy to administer as there are varying levels of non-compliance.  Some are as simple as store hours of operation but others are more complex such as selling merchandise that another
tenant has an exclusive right to sell or failure to continually operate the store, “going dark” as we say in the industry.  The violation occurs and the owner’s representative posts a demand for compliance to the violating party.  The party persists in the illicit activity and the owner’s representative wants to take further action but the owner is again reluctant as a tenant paying rent is better than a vacant space.  As the rouge tenants activities become known by other tenants there is a change in attitude from other tenants who feel they are also entitled to stray from the lease rules.  Again, as a property owner and property manager my opinion has always been to throw the bums out if they won’t honor the rules of operational behavior.

I recognize that high vacancy makes it difficult to operate
a commercial property; however, tenants who don’t pay rent or follow the rules
have no respect for the property, other tenants or customers and are a
detriment to leasing vacant spaces.  It
is far better to throw the bums out and look for a new tenant than to try to salvage
a bad one.  As my mom use to say, “One
bad apple spoils the whole barrel”.