Im looking for a new commercial property management team. What are some good "go to" questions to ask during their interviews, and what kind of answers should I be looking for?
Long story short, my first commercial real estate management team was a total bust, and they were replaced pretty quick.

The second management team is the one working right now. They are only 950 a month for our 12 suite building. They have managed my property for a few years now, but I realized that their business model is "charge as little as possible to the owner, but profit off the building in not so obvious ways", which is sneaky and costing me a lot of money.

I'm looking for a new team, I have a few interviews, or meeting lined up rather, and I just want to get some ideas on things to ask.



 

[{"id": "efsf55q", "text": "What non obvious ways are they profiting off the building?  ", "replies": [{"id": "efsfdfi", "text": "Likely steering repair/maintenance to offshoots of the PM company, leaving listings for vacancies up to drive traffic to other buildings etc.\n\n", "replies": [], "depth": 2}, {"id": "eftz7c5", "text": "I realized they were overspending on things like cabinet instillation, bathroom renovation, etc. I just thought maybe they weren't doing their dd on getting a good estimate, so obviously I told them to send me an email anytime they need to spend more than 500$ on repairs, or other little things. \n\nI was able to find a better estimate every single time, with little effort, then I found out that they had a back door deal with these repair companies. The maintenance, renovation, and repair guys were partnered with my management company. When they were referred to do the job, my PM would get paid a % of the payment, which motivated them to jack up the price, be dishonest, and *always* find something that needed to be repaired \"immidiately\".\n\nThis is just one example, there is a lot of shady things I don't like. They almost act annoyed when I find a better estimate, and then job gets done amazingly for a cheap price. They gotta go asap.\n\n\n", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "efsfh0j", "text": "Ask about their backend office, how many support staff etc. Do they employ any maintenance or repair staff that they will be billing for? What is their average time on market for leased space? \n\n", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "efsrnvj", "text": "Just a handful off the top of my head...What happens when a tenant calls and says there's a roof leak? When they call your office, does someone pick up all the time? Only during normal business hours? If there's a recording for after hours, how is that routed? What is a typical follow up time frame? For true emergencies, who do tenants call and who exactly is dispatched to the property?  Also, there's a few comments here that seem to be wrapping leasing and property management into one. These are two very different areas and I would recommend treating them as such. Don't hire a firm to do leasing just because they are the property management company. Find the best fit for each. ", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "efssp7t", "text": "i just replaced management on a 60,000SF office building, and my lord was there as lot of skimming, it's been a month. we've saved about 10k already, we're on targed for total savings to be in excess of 50k by end of year, couple that with a 40K sallery.... yeesh\n\n\n\nWith that said, the key for us was control. It's hard work but it's the only way: Please drop the numbers accordingly because this is just a very different building than yours...\n\n\n\nPayments under $3k have no approvals necessary, however checks have to be accompanied by an invoice and have to be accompanied with an invoice for a completed job (i.e. we can't do 6 payments of 3k...) \n\n\n\nanything above that, has to be quoted by 3 contractors. You of course will have yours in the mix to make sure everything is sensiible\n\n\n\nfinally: check all your contracts. for us it was elevator and boiler maintenance - they both dropped hard!\n\n\nIf you have those covered, management becomes formulaic, see how many buildings they handle, and make sure they have ONE dedicated person for the building, who's got a cell phone number that's always on and responds immediately, and make sure that they have staff near by if an emergency arises. Oh, and make sure they have a resolution management system online. everything they do should be on some sort of CRM (we use slack) so that if they ever need replacing, you can plug in someone else.\n", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]