BY BARBARA PINCKNEY
The extreme weather of the past winter illustrates
just how difficult being a property manager
can be.
“Property management is a 24/7 job and is often
not glamorous,” said Alan Oppenheim, principal in
ACO Property Advisors Inc. of Saratoga Springs.
“Roof leaks and parking lot ‘slip and falls’ were
some of the expected horrors from this past winter.
It was not at all uncommon to be up on a building
roof fighting ice dams with a variety of power tools
at all hours.”
Other property managers spoke of heating issues,
snow removal and “frozen pipes and all the
fun stuff that goes with that.”
“It’s a mess,” said Ash Anand, owner of the Lotus
Support Services in Warrensburg.
But if the winter made it hard to be a property
manager, it also made it clear just why owners
of commercial and residential properties would
want to hire one.
“More and more people are realizing that,
whether it is extreme weather or something else,
everything has an effect on how a property is
managed today,” Anand said. “I look at it as peace
of mind because just because someone owns a
property, does not mean that they understand
construction or any related items to do with the
maintenance of it. So [the property management
business] is only growing, that I can tell you.”
Property management is not all about fighting
ice dams and mounds of snow. Many of the responsibilities
are more routine, such as collecting rents
and dues, hiring vendors and contractors, dealing
with tenant issues and paying the bills.
Augustus Williams, principal in Management-
Consulting and Administrative Processing Inc., or
M-CAP, an 18-month-old, family owned company
in Saratoga Springs, is in the niche business of
managing condominium and townhouse properties
for owners’ associations. He described the
company’s responsibilities as being “from A to Z.”
“There is exterior maintenance, pressure washing.
There is lawn care, sprinkler systems, trash
going out,” he said. “We collect dues from the
owners every month and make bank deposits. We pay the light bill for the common areas, we pay the
phone bill for the lines attached to safety systems
… So we are handling everything that is required
for the building. We walk through once a week, we
make sure everything is safe and we cover them so
they have a comfortable lifestyle without having
to worry who is going to mow the lawn this week.”
Oppenheim, who has been a property manager
for 20 years, handles commercial properties
throughout upstate New York. These range from
a 20,000-square-foot commercial office building
to a former lakefront resort. He said “typical”
services for a commercial building include reviewing
leases, assessing potential tenants, collecting
rent, implementing maintenance and financial
management systems, hiring vendors and making
annual budgets.
The job also entails making routine inspections
of the property as well as ongoing assessments
of the physical plant and the need for capital
improvements.
Anand, whose company manages about 60
commercial and residential properties, including
hotels and vacation homes, agreed that a big part
of the job involves saving the owner money by
keeping on top of things “that could be a bigger
problem tomorrow. This could be electrical, this
could be plumbing, overall construction, landscaping,
it doesn’t matter.”
Williams said this is where his background–he
was in construction for 40 years–comes into play.
“We know what is going to take place three
years from now and five years from now,” he said.
“We know, for example, that three years from now
we are going to have to be painting the structural
steel. So we try to stay ahead of the curve by providing
the [association] board with a plan to do
the work two years ahead of time. That’s really the
challenge–keeping ahead of the curve, knowing
what is going to happen.”
It is the property manager’s job to not only provide
a long-range plan for ongoing maintenance,
but to budget and make sure the money is there
to support necessary projects.
But, as this winter proved, there will always
be surprises. These may be as mundane as leaky
toilets, as troublesome as frozen pipes or as annoying
as security system alarm calls in the middle of
the night–which require a trip to the property,
even for false alarms.
Which, again, is why owners hire property
managers.
“Why go through those headaches if you can
give it to somebody else and rest in peace?”
Anand said.