One of the most important activities to ensure our business plan is being met and ideally exceeded is asset management. While we hire a third-party management company to oversee the onsite day-to-day operations, it’s still our responsibility as the general partner (GP) to ensure success.
Our asset management approach involves people, process, and technology to help us achieve the results we expect. The people component begins each week with an individual property call that includes onsite staff, the regional property manager, and our team to discuss physical performance (i.e., renovations or required repairs), financial performance, and other key topics.
Before our weekly call, the property manager sends a key performance indicator (KPI) report that includes stats like occupancy, the number of tours, prospective leads, new leases, declined leases and why, property reviews, maintenance requests, completed and upcoming resident events, and any market changes. Bringing everyone together on a regular basis allows us to stay up to date on performance and be proactive. Throughout the week, our management teams communicate with us over the phone and email if there are any deviations from the budget or property performance so we can make real-time adjustments and avoid any month-end surprises.
In order to track our discussions and action items, we use Microsoft Teams. This technology allows our PassiveInvesting.com team to enter tasks, follow-ups, or questions that we need answers to and allows other team members to make comments and collaborate on topics together. With Teams, we can track and store all activities in one place, so everyone is knowledgeable of what’s happened in the past, what’s being discussed, and what’s occurring at each property.
A recent example of how this process has been successful is from an actual resident review at Braxton at Woods Lake. Based on our asset management approach and working diligently with our management team to make property upgrades, we’ve been able to create an improved community for residents. See example in figure 1. The residents are really enjoying the capital improvements at this property. This resident lived at the property before we acquired it and was unhappy with previous management, but updated their review recently based on our new management/ownership.
