More than 50% of property management departments in Australia are managed by a principal who has never worked in property management and spends a disproportionate amount of time focussing on their sales department.
When this focus imbalance occurs, the people in property management feel they are treated as ‘second best’.
These comments collected on our Facebook posts indicate how they feel, in a most humorous way.
Over to our audience –
You know it’s a sales focussed real estate business when:
- The boss says he doesn’t want to get rid of bad landlords because “they might want to sell one day!”
- The PM of the year is awarded a trophy and Salesperson of the Year wins a car!
- The sales department head out for a golfing day & leave the PM department to man the office!
- The sales staff start quoting potential rental prices on their sales advertising without first consulting with the PM saying; ‘I didn’t have time to discuss it with YOU’ or ‘oh, I forgot you were there’.
- The Principal refers to the PM department as a ‘holding pen for sales’. Sounds like we are running a cattle business!
- The whole sales team is offered lunch at a top restaurant at Crown for a sales target and Property Management gets coffee maybe once a year at Coffee Club.
- When the sales Team complains all phone calls appear to be for PM and believes we not passing on the calls and taking away the business company profits.
- When you’re made to sit in the back seat of the car because you’re not in sales you’re just a PM – smile.
- When the salespeople fail to ring a tenant to show a prospective buyer through the property.
- The sales staff ask you to ‘bump up’ the rental appraisal as it’s “just for the bank”.
- You go to the quarterly or annual awards and there are four categories for PM and about 40,000 for sales!
- When the sales department says “Rent this unsafe and un-maintained property” they will knock it down in the future and build apartments that we will get to sell.
- When the property managers answer phone calls instead of admin!
- It takes an hour to go through the sales stats at the end of the financial year review and less than 10 minutes to cover PM!
- When the sales team quotes low management fees to their purchasers, forgetting that when the sales market slows down the principal will be relying on management fees to keep the office open. Then who will pay for their precious marketing?
- When the sales rep gets the bonus for giving the PM department a new property, but the PM has to suck up to the owner, advertise, get a tenant and do the PCR. Oh, that’s right – that’s our job!
- The licensee doesn’t want to renew lease agreements because it’s easier to terminate the tenants if the owner decides to sell!
- When you call the office and it says press one for sales press two for rentals. We are always number two.
- When a tenant midway through a fixed-term tenancy purchase a house and the salesperson misleads the tenant by indicating that there should be no problem just getting out of the remainder of the tenancy agreement without penalty or break the lease etc. just to close the sale.
- When the ‘For Lease’ signs are actually a For Sale sign with a sticker to cover the ‘Sale’!
- When you are asked to do a rental appraisal for a sale property and the sales manager gets annoyed with you because you insist on inspecting the property yourself instead of just signing your name to the rental amount he came up with.
- When the sales staff think they ‘carry’ the business. Pfft! Property management pays your wage when you don’t sell anything!
- When there is a monthly competition for the most sales appraisals and zip for PM!
- When you reach the new listing target and the boss congratulates you by raising the bar for next month.
- When a sales rep asks you to do a rent appraisal on a house that doesn’t exist for the bank. Plans haven’t even been submitted to council it’s just a block of dirt and you’re supposed to appraise a phantom house!!!! No worries that’s fine ill just make it up and put my signature on it so u can make a sale!!!
- When the principal says that why can’t you handle PM well when there are 3 of you in the PM department and I’m only earning few cents in it than my thousand dollars in sales.
