Ask any principal what's worn them down over the last three to five years, and property management recruitment will be near the top of the list.
It's become one of the hardest problems in the business. And the numbers explain why.
The average property manager's entire career lasts about three years. Not their time in one office. Their whole career. Three years, and they're gone.
Then there's this. At any given moment, 52% of property managers are thinking about leaving the industry altogether.
Sit with that for a second. Half the profession is strongly considering exiting at any given point. So when you go looking for an experienced property manager who also happens to be the right cultural fit for your business, you're fishing in a shrinking pond. No wonder it feels hard. It is hard.
So the real question isn't only how you recruit a great property manager. It's how you build one, and create an environment good enough to keep them. Let's walk through your options.
Option one: The Ad
The old reflex is to jump onto SEEK and post an ad.
Anyone who's been in property management for a while knows how that story ends now. The response rate is down. The great property managers, the ones you actually want, aren't scrolling job sites. So the ad quietly stops working, and you're left sorting through applications that were never going to fit.
Option two: The Recruiter
You go to a recruiter. And sometimes that works.
But understand what it costs. A recruitment agency will often charge 10 to 15% of the salary you're about to pay your new property manager. That's a significant sum before they've managed a single property for you.
From the property manager's side, a recruiter is a no-lose situation. Someone else does the groundwork. Someone else negotiates their salary up. That's exactly why the good ones gravitate to recruiters, and exactly why the job ad keeps falling flat.
There's nothing wrong with using a recruiter. Just go in with your eyes open about the cost, and about what it's doing to the market you're hiring from.
Option three: Grow Your Own
Here's the third option. It takes time, and it is, by a distance, the best one.
If you have the opportunity to grow your own property manager, take it. Bring someone in without experience and develop them yourself. Two things happen that money simply can't buy.
First, they fit your culture, because they grew up in it. You don't have someone arriving from another office, set in their ways, doing things the way their last principal did. These people are happy to do it your way, because your way is the only way they've known.
Second, they don't carry bad habits. There's nothing to unlearn. Every habit they build, they build with you, and they build it right.
That's the quiet power of developing from within. You're not buying a finished product and hoping it fits your business. You're building exactly what your business needs.
So how do you actually develop one?
This is where Smartre Training comes in, and there are two ways we help you do it.
The first is Winning Ways Professional Property Management. It's a two-day operational seminar that covers property management operations from start to finish. You can bring your rookie property manager along, someone with no experience at all, and they walk out with the full spectrum of how the job is done.
It's backed by online training on the Smartre Training Academy that walks them through the practical work step by step: how to run a routine inspection, an entry inspection and an exit inspection, and exactly what to look for in each.
The second place is to consider using Smartre Training within your business as a whole. This is a larger commitment, so to give you more perspective on whether this is right for you or not, we’ve put together a short 60-minute webinar on how to run a property management business.
This webinar is for you, the principal. We cover protecting your margin and understanding your true cost to manage. How to build a great culture around service to your client. How to structure your entries and routines. And how to recruit and train great people, so the whole cycle keeps feeding itself.
Two ways in. One idea.
The best property manager you'll ever have may be someone who hasn't managed a single property yet.
Recruiting from outside will always have its place. But in a market where half the profession is eyeing the exit, the principals who win are the ones who stop only shopping for talent and start building it.
Want to get started?
If either of these sounds like what your business needs, the details are below.
From Reactive to Proactive: A Better Way to Run Your PM Department (webinar), 8th September: register here
Winning Ways: Professional Property Management, Sydney, 11th - 12th February: register here
We look forward to seeing you soon.
Ask any principal what's worn them down over the last three to five years, and property management recruitment will be near the top of the list.
It's become one of the hardest problems in the business. And the numbers explain why.
The average property manager's entire career lasts about three years. Not their time in one office. Their whole career. Three years, and they're gone.
Then there's this. At any given moment, 52% of property managers are thinking about leaving the industry altogether.
Sit with that for a second. Half the profession is strongly considering exiting at any given point. So when you go looking for an experienced property manager who also happens to be the right cultural fit for your business, you're fishing in a shrinking pond. No wonder it feels hard. It is hard.
So the real question isn't only how you recruit a great property manager. It's how you build one, and create an environment good enough to keep them. Let's walk through your options.
Option one: The Ad
The old reflex is to jump onto SEEK and post an ad.
Anyone who's been in property management for a while knows how that story ends now. The response rate is down. The great property managers, the ones you actually want, aren't scrolling job sites. So the ad quietly stops working, and you're left sorting through applications that were never going to fit.
Option two: The Recruiter
You go to a recruiter. And sometimes that works.
But understand what it costs. A recruitment agency will often charge 10 to 15% of the salary you're about to pay your new property manager. That's a significant sum before they've managed a single property for you.
From the property manager's side, a recruiter is a no-lose situation. Someone else does the groundwork. Someone else negotiates their salary up. That's exactly why the good ones gravitate to recruiters, and exactly why the job ad keeps falling flat.
There's nothing wrong with using a recruiter. Just go in with your eyes open about the cost, and about what it's doing to the market you're hiring from.
Option three: Grow Your Own
Here's the third option. It takes time, and it is, by a distance, the best one.
If you have the opportunity to grow your own property manager, take it. Bring someone in without experience and develop them yourself. Two things happen that money simply can't buy.
First, they fit your culture, because they grew up in it. You don't have someone arriving from another office, set in their ways, doing things the way their last principal did. These people are happy to do it your way, because your way is the only way they've known.
Second, they don't carry bad habits. There's nothing to unlearn. Every habit they build, they build with you, and they build it right.
That's the quiet power of developing from within. You're not buying a finished product and hoping it fits your business. You're building exactly what your business needs.
So how do you actually develop one?
This is where Smartre Training comes in, and there are two ways we help you do it.
The first is Winning Ways Professional Property Management. It's a two-day operational seminar that covers property management operations from start to finish. You can bring your rookie property manager along, someone with no experience at all, and they walk out with the full spectrum of how the job is done.
It's backed by online training on the Smartre Training Academy that walks them through the practical work step by step: how to run a routine inspection, an entry inspection and an exit inspection, and exactly what to look for in each.
The second place is to consider using Smartre Training within your business as a whole. This is a larger commitment, so to give you more perspective on whether this is right for you or not, we’ve put together a short 60-minute webinar on how to run a property management business.
This webinar is for you, the principal. We cover protecting your margin and understanding your true cost to manage. How to build a great culture around service to your client. How to structure your entries and routines. And how to recruit and train great people, so the whole cycle keeps feeding itself.
Two ways in. One idea.
The best property manager you'll ever have may be someone who hasn't managed a single property yet.
Recruiting from outside will always have its place. But in a market where half the profession is eyeing the exit, the principals who win are the ones who stop only shopping for talent and start building it.
Want to get started?
If either of these sounds like what your business needs, the details are below.
From Reactive to Proactive: A Better Way to Run Your PM Department (webinar), 8th September: register here
Winning Ways: Professional Property Management, Sydney, 11th - 12th February: register here
We look forward to seeing you soon.
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