“HELLO. I’M LOOKING FOR INDUSTRY-STANDARD STAFFING RATIOS FOR APARTMENT BUILDINGS
— I.E., 1 MANAGER PER 100 APARTMENTS AND X MAINTENANCE MEN PER 100 APARTMENTS.
I KNOW THERE ARE MANY VARIABLES. BUT WE HAVE A LUXURY APARTMENT COMPLEX WITH
POOL, TENNIS COURT, WORKOUT ROOM, ETC. WE HAVE 230 APARTMENTS. THE COMPLEX IS
LESS THAN FIVE YEARS OLD. ARE THERE ANY GENERAL GUIDELINES IN THE INDUSTRY?”
“Hi everyone. I’m new to this forum and was hoping to get some
advice. I recently started my own residential property manage-ment/apartment finding service. I began by working for an
owner of a building in which I formerly lived. I have no problem
finding people who are looking for an apartment, but I’m having
problems finding owners to work for. I have created a Web site
and done some marketing on Craigslist, but have not received
much feedback or calls from investors looking for tenants or
management. Is there a way that I can find leads for owners of
multi-unit properties? Am I going about this the wrong way?
Please help. Thanks in advance for your advice.”
“I am trying to put together a diverse welcome packet for new
and existing tenants. I am thinking to include information about
renter’s insurance, some coupons for local businesses, maps,
etc. What other items does anybody add into welcome packets?”
Years ago, a property manager had nowhere to turn for
answers to these kinds of questions. Maybe they could consult
a dusty, outdated manual on a shelf. Maybe they could consult
a friend or two in the industry and hope they had dealt successfully with the same issue and offer some advice. Or maybe they’d
just try to figure it out alone and hope for the best.
Fortunately, the property managers that posted these comments online have a much larger pool of knowledge to draw
from — an entire community of peers in property management
who readily share their experiences and ideas on IREMFIRST.org.
The online community forum is just one of many dynamic, interactive features on IREMFIRST, a Web portal developed and
maintained by the Institute for Real Estate Management. Members and nonmembers alike come to IREMFIRST — the “FIRST”
stands for “For Information, Resources, Solutions and Training”
— to find the tools they need to do their jobs well.
“One of the cornerstones of IREM’s mission is education,”
says Elsie Hermann, eKnowledge manager at IREM. “
IREMFIRST really supports that. It’s been a success so far and it’s
constantly evolving.”
Users on the site create a profile and are then free to access
any of the resources on the site, such as the Community Forum
and Knowledge Center, sign up to be an expert on the site or
contribute a document that could be useful to others in the profession. The site also offers “What’s Hot This Week,” the “
Question of the Week” and the “Tech Tip of the Week.” For an added
incentive to get involved, there’s a leaderboard that showcases
the most active members of the online community.
In the year since the current version of IREMFIRST was
launched, 1,700 users have created profiles, and the intention
is to ultimately have a profile for all 18,000 IREM members
and beyond.
“We have been growing this knowledge center into so much
more than a knowledge center,” says IREM’s 2009 President
Pam Monroe, CPM. “We will continue to build on the product
so it will be the ultimate go-to resource for anyone with a question about real estate management.”
CREATING COMMUNITY
Think back to 2001-2002. While Internet use was common,
social networking was not. Nobody was “friending” you on
Facebook or adding you to their LinkedIn network. The most
you could find was a clunky online bulletin board of similar-minded people. So when then-IREM President Ed Boudreau,
CPM, had the idea to create an online knowledge center
that would foster a community in the real estate management
profession, there was a lot of head-scratching and puzzled
looks.
“I remember struggling the whole year,” says Ron Goss,
IREM secretary-treasurer, who was a senior vice president for
the organization during that time and was asked to lead the
project. “I did not know what vision the executive director had,
and I’m not sure he had it compact enough yet that he could
verbalize it to us.”
Eventually, IREM hired a consultant and the staff began to
see what could be done. “We became more and more aware
of the endless possibilities a knowledge management center
could provide for our members,” Goss says. “IREM became a
very exciting place to be. We realized the benefits to our members could be endless.”
The original version of IREMFIRST launched in April 2004.
In September 2005, an IREMFIRST task force met for two days
to outline the next phase of development. The group included
12 IREM members and 10 staff members. The 24-page, detailed
report from that meeting is the foundation for the current
IREMFIRST. Hermann says this sentence in the report sums
up the immediate value of the enhanced site: “IREMFIRST will
WHAT IS REAL ESTATE MANAGEMENT?
Real estate management is the administration, operation,
marketing and maintenance of property in order to achieve
the objectives of the property’s owner. Real estate managers are in a service business, and they work closely with
both the owners of the properties they manage and the
tenants and residents who reside and work within these
properties.
