Risk management is a recurring topic in Property Management because it’s so important. As a property manager, you are constantly asking yourself, “How can I manage and reduce risk for my Property Management business?” In this week’s blog, we are going to take a look at three answers to that exact question.
The first answer is our Policy and Procedures Manual for Property Management. One of the easiest ways to get yourself into trouble running a property management business is failing to set guidelines for staff, or failing to be consistent with how you handle clients. Both of these can be eliminated with a simple Policy and Procedures Manual. Policies provide consistent guidelines for your staff and help them make decisions that comply with laws / regulations and align with your company practices. Procedures provide instruction for completing responsibilities and are particularly useful in training new people. Not only does it help you follow regulations, it also makes it easier to train staff and get your business running smoothly. To save yourself time and energy while writing your policy and procedures, use our manual to have it done with ease.
How you set expectations and work with owners can make or break your property management business. Being inconsistent and not fulfilling expectations will end in losing a client or worse: a lawsuit. It can be hard to know what expectations should be set and where. This is why we created the Setting Expectations Owners Manual. This manual will help you set expectations, clarify policies and procedures, and manage your owner relationships. This will promote loyalty, retain accounts, and attract more referrals. It will not only help you manage client expectations but will give you employees guidelines to follow. This allows you to ensure that owner expectations are being maintained throughout your business. The supporting forms increase efficiency and help to mitigate risk with owners. This manual is fully customizable so you can add to, remove, or modify any part to make them fit how you do business.
Finally, as a property management company you collect lots of personal data from your clientele: social security number, date of birth, ID, passport and more. How you protect or fail to protect this data can lead to lawsuits or large fines. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) created the Red Flags Rule that requires qualifying businesses, like real estate / property management companies, to have a written policy to educate staff and combat identity theft. While defining a red flags policy may seem straightforward, there are countless procedures that, if skipped, could be detrimental. For example leaving a tenant’s application unattended on your desk while going to lunch could be considered a violation of the red flags rule because their information is at risk. While it can take hours researching and writing your own red flags policy, we created a template so you can have it done faster than ever. The Red Flags Rule Office Policy helps you comply with the FTC requirements, protect your clientele from identity theft, and train your personnel on this important issue.
As you have seen, managing risk is a complex process that requires policies, procedures and guidelines to prevent any mistakes from happening. The most important are a Policy and Procedures Manual for you entire business, a red flags policy and guidelines for managing owner’s expectations. We have created detailed manuals for all three of these crucial subjects and more. Mitigate risk in your property management business quickly and easily with our manuals! Learn more at our online store with detailed product pages including descriptions, table of contents and sample text from the manual.
Kathleen Richards, is the owner of PM Made Easy and The Property Management Coach. With her 13 years as a broker/owner of a property management company she speaks from experience. Kathleen authored, Property Management A-Z and teaches regularly at community colleges and conferences on property management topics. She is active in her field and holds professional designations as Master Property Manager (MPM®) and Residential Management Professional (RMP®) and her company held the coveted, Certified Residential Management Company (CRMC®) designation from NARPM®. She is currently a National Instructor for NARPM® and is honored to be sharing best practices with other NARPM® professionals. Kathleen has served at the local and state level on the boards for NARPM® (National Association of Residential Property Managers)
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