Navigating New Property Managements: The Comprehensive Checklist for Onboarding Commercial, Industrial and Retail Properties
When embarking on a new property management role, it’s crucial to consider and thoroughly investigate various aspects. Each property and location is unique, making a checklist approach to property management an excellent strategy.
By tailoring your checklist to your preferred property types and locations, you can ensure comprehensive coverage. From financial management to tenant management, lease documentation, landlord instructions, and maintenance, every aspect of the property requires your attention and meticulous documentation.
The size and location will be the first issues to check out and understand. The larger the property to manage, the larger the tenancy mix and the number of things to investigate. That is certainly the case in multi-tenanted buildings such as office towers and shopping centres.
Starting with a tenancy schedule will give you an idea of the tenant mix and vacancies, but all of the leases will need to be found, checked, and collated. Here are some other categories to start working on as you build your property management and leasing checklist.
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Start Your Property Management Checklist
Having a clear strategy when approaching a new property to manage is essential. Do you take detailed notes during conversations with the landlord, tenants, and contractors? These notes can be invaluable in future discussions, disputes, and property changes.
Consider supplementing your notes with a photographic record of the property. This comprehensive documentation approach will provide a solid reference point for future property management decisions.
Expect disagreements and discussions to happen in the future about any and all property facts and occupancy issues; that is why your notes and photographs are important from the very start. So, you need a property management checklist for all property types.
Financial Facts:
Understanding the property’s financial aspects is paramount. Beyond the obvious factors of rental income and property expenditure, delve into the income by tenant and the maintenance records by essential services.
Acquire the property’s financial history over the last few years, including the current financial year and any active budget. This information allows you to benchmark your property against market averages of similar properties, helping you make informed decisions and set realistic goals in property management.
Maintenance Facts:
In any property, there will be the ‘standard’ maintenance events and the unusual ones, including larger capital works programs.
Break all your maintenance down into ‘cost categories’ and timeframes. Then, you can compare those items to other properties of similar type and location. The averages of maintenance costs can tell you so much and highlight issues and problems.
Tenant Investigations:
Tenant details are crucial to property management, particularly in larger properties with a diverse tenant mix. Identify the strengths and weaknesses in the tenant mix, and be vigilant for arrears and vacancy issues.
Categorise tenants into retail merchandise groups, floors or zones, and groups based on ‘successful occupancy’. Knowing your tenants, their contact information, and their activities is essential. From the tenant list, you can anticipate critical date issues, lease expiries, and negotiation opportunities, aiding in proactive planning.
The Property Documents:
When you look at the tenant mix, there will be a variety of documents to find and review. It can take hours or even days to go through the papers for the tenant mix of a large property.
Understanding the critical dates from each lease and the important tenant and landlord covenants will be part of the process, so you must read the lease and extract all the information.
A standard form with review categories will help you with that.
So, what property documents should you find and review? There are plenty, but this list will help you get started.
- Lease agreements and amendments for each tenancy situation
- Service contracts and warranties for maintenance items
- Property deeds and ownership records
- Plans and drawings of the property and improvements
- Tenancy plans and fit-out drawings and approvals
- Survey plans of the land, including building placement
- Approvals and authorities applying to building, health and safety codes
Create Your Full Property Management Checklist:
Consider all the above items and any variations you should add to the list, given your location and preferred property types. Get organised and start your property management checklist.
From all these facts and investigations, you will have plenty to do and check. As mentioned earlier, do your checks, create meetings with the right people, and take plenty of notes.
