Time Management Tips for Property Managers

Property managers are faced with a wide range of tasks on a daily basis, ranging from negotiating leases, inspecting properties, showing homes and following up with maintenance and tenant-related issues.

Having so many things on your plate every single day can make managing your time incredibly tricky. Fortunately, there are a number of things you can do to get your workday back on track.

Track Your Time

The first thing you need to do before you can improve your time management is understand where that time is going. It’s critical to start tracking where you spend your time each day and week so you can then make the appropriate adjustments.

Start by keeping a time diary for a week and break down your activities into different sections. Then find out where most of your time is going.

Prioritise

Being more efficient means that you need to make the most of your time and do your highest value activities.

Once, you’ve determined where your time goes, you need to cross-reference that with the most important activities. If you believe bringing on new business is the most important part of the role, you need to be focused on that. If you are required to look after lease negotiations and manage open homes, that should be the priority in your diary each week.

Find out the most important activities and not only allocate them the required time, but also try to do them when you’re at your most effective. There are a range of activities, such as checking email and answering calls, that might not make a big difference to your bottom line, but take up a lot of time.

Outsource

If you simply don’t have enough time during the week to get everything done or if you want to maximise your day, you need to find ways to fire yourself from certain tasks. This means outsourcing and that will mean taking on an assistant or outsourcing either to a virtual assistant or to a complementary service provider.

Many people in real estate have virtual assistants and teams in place and it’s increasingly common to have third parties conduct inspections.

Leverage Technology

In this era of technology, there are multiple tools that you can use to make your job easier and more efficient.

Automating tedious tasks such as outreach, appointment scheduling, segmentation, email blasts and follow-up messages can be the first step to really freeing up your schedule.

Market leading property management software is critical to all aspects of a property manager’s role, but be sure to choose one with built-in automation to allow you to nurture your leads and lead scoring capabilities and make you more effective at prospecting.

Cloud-based property management software can also help you improve your workflows and can save you hours every single week.