A day in the life of a property manager

9.27am: Relieve those manning the phones. Incoming calls “hunt” round the office until someone is found who can answer. Receive a message that one of my porters has called in sick. I immediately arrange a replacement porter who can be on-site within the hour.

10.17am: Check paperwork for a meeting I have with a Board of Directors tonight. This week is a particularly bad week for evening meetings. Normally I only have one evening meeting a week, but this week I have three. I have 800+ units and work with 11 Boards. Also deal with specific Directors on key issues. It’s a juggling act.

11.29am: Arrange for my assistant to send out Section 20 notices for a major external redecoration project at one of my blocks. New Boards sometimes seem to feel we made the laws just to irritate them. Explain very gently. Our in-house surveyors are an enormous help in speeding up the processes.

11.31am:  Rush to meeting of Board full of retired owners of big companies. Usually, the bigger they are, the nicer they are; sympathetic to the occasional mistake that happens in the best organised families.

2.19pm: Brief assistant on estimates and job orders. Great system. Everything is followed up by our maintenance department right to conclusion. Nothing like first class monitoring of our approved contractors.

2.41pm: Flake out on couch in kitchen rest area for 10 minutes. Seem to have missed lunch. Am I dieting?

2.54pm: New block in real mess; arrears, no money for major works and problems with previous manager getting all information across. It’s a struggle but we are managing to finally get the last bits of information from them. Have a meeting with credit control. We’ve received authorisation to commence court action against two of the leaseholders who haven’t paid service charges in over 12 months.

3.17pm: Prepare statements and collate information required by our legal team for the new court cases.

4.20pm: Check emails and phone messages. One “thank you” and called “a miracle worker”. A tenant had to be talked out of flouting parking regulations. Appealed to his better nature. Found he had one; long shot but always try. Put email in “Nice” file. Read them when I’m feeling low.

4.45pm: Meeting with director of property management. Working with developers before new flats come onto the market. This morning, we are revising the proposed leases. We share a passion for property.

5.15pm: Finish first new budget for block we took over a year ago. Nine different cost centres and an overall estate charge; new accounts system can import the info I need into the format I want. Silently bless accounts team.

5.57pm: Furious concentration on dealing with urgent items of correspondence.

6.11pm: Pizza with a few other managers who also have evening meetings. Diet?

6.47pm: Off to my meeting. Not every day is manic, not every day is easy, but then that’s why we love the business.

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