Selecting a Property Management Company

What process and or criteria is recommended when determining which Property Management company, a Board should select? Please advise.

Michael

Do an online search but narrow it down such as HOA Management companies, not just Property Management.

Contact other associations and ask for their PM company.

Once you find a company or two, ask them for references for similar size associations.

The first question I would ask the OP. Why are you looking to make the change?

1) Is the Management Company not responsive to your boards concerns?
2) Is the Manager not responsive?
3) Is the Back-office staff not doing the Job?

I would never reach out to homeowners and ask what they do not like about the Company. If you have ever checked Yelp or other sources, you can see that they all get terrible reviews from angry owners that may have had issues or received letters or are in collections. Nobody knows more than the actual board members that deal with the PMC on a regular basis. You also need to remember that they are all staffed with workers that have to large of a portfolio of properties and are usually under paid. It is not a very rewarding job most of the time. Burnout is a real thing and turnover is terrible for HOA board members. Our last PMC is one of the biggest in the business and the last year before we fired them, we had 5 PMs after each before either left or was fired by the PMC. What a nightmare.

In the 2 cases that I have been successful in replacing the big company with a smaller well-respected company have worked out perfect. We have had our current company for 3 years with the same PM the entire time and he is Great. At the end of the day the most important person in the company is the guy that handles the everyday details.

Our PMC has dropped the ball sooo many times that I believe we’re going to dump them and begin actively looking for a replacement. It’s been suggested before - but “Honestly Doctor, I think we may really crash this time.”

I’ve never been involved in this kind of effort before, but there are a handful of concrete items that I think we’ll be looking for:

- Their availability to handle issues with the pool. The pool gets maximum use on Friday afternoons, weekends, and holidays. Our PMC is closed at those times.
- Related: response time on emergencies.
- How many other properties is our PM going to handle? We’re currently one of ten. That ratio is not proving to be realistic.
- What portal system do they use for ACC, Violations, payments, etc? Our ACC likes the system that our PMC has set up with. Another PMC that uses the same system would be attractive to us.
- Related: what kind of visibility does the Board have into these systems?
- I think we might like to have some kind of formal agreement or system on status reporting. We’ve had too many action items simply disappear. Admittedly, this is partially the Board’s fault. But also, we’re paying the PMC to help us navigate through these issues.
- Related: firm time and date tracking of action items as they come and go.

We might be in for a shock - it might be that we can’t find anyone who meets these requirements within our budget. And the stuff about progress reports and time/date tracking - I may live to regret that: I’ve dealt with some very shabby business service interfaces, we need something that effective but not inflexible, and that may be tough to find. But at least we’ve got a few solid requirements.

Again, this is merely my thinking on how to approach a task I’ve never done before. So, to any future generations reading this: don’t mistake my thoughts for actual experience.

BillD

I would schedule and Executive Session to discuss options. Contract negotiating is clearly one of the 4 things that are done in Executive session. I would also keep it quite because you will need several meetings to get this sort of thing done right. I have heard on this Blog that once the Existing PMC starts getting suspicious, they can give you their 30-day notice and then you lose the time needed to prepare. At the same time, you will need to get as much of the paperwork as you possibly can this includes mailing list for your homeowners and past due accounts. Once the PMC gets notice you can expect them to clam up and make things harder on the transition.

I always get a kick when posters think oh well just change the PMC company and everything will be better. You will be hiring a company that knows nearly nothing about your property. They will need help getting up to speed and it can take months. I am not saying it is not worth it in the end because in our case it was 100% worth it.

Completely agree. thanks