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Commercial Property Management differs greatly from the Management of Residential Properties

07-Jan-11

Commercial property management differs greatly from the management of residential properties. When it comes to commercial properties, there are many different things that you have to be aware of. The building as a whole will have much more rules and regulations, and the entire job of a management company can have much more responsibility. Many records will need to be kept for the property because of legal obligations, and the entire association needs to run a lot more organized depending what the specific property is.

Usually in most commercial facilities, there is a lot of maintenance that is required. From the grounds, to the landscaping, to the inside facilities offered in the building, all of this has to be properly kept in working order. A major job of a management company is to contract all of this type of work out to companies wishing to do the service. Bids will also have to be taken in and analyzed to make sure the management company is saving as much money as possible, while at the same time getting the proper work done. In many cases, repair work is also contracted out through this service.

If the commercial property plans on making large repairs, or even adding on some type of addition, the management company can control that bidding process as well. Once all bids are in order, they will be presented to the board, and the specific contractors will be selected to do the work. Once selected, the management company will take care of scheduling and take care of all the paper work required. All rules and regulations will have to be followed accordingly during the process of adding onto a commercial property, and it is the job of the association and Management Company to follow all procedures legally and accordingly.

Security is a major factor of commercial property management as whole. In most cases, a security guard is hired, or even at times, an entire security team. There is also usually a main security room that has video feeds to all the cameras on the grounds. Gate systems that deal with parking also will need to be maintained. All of these different procedures of security can be handled by the hiring of a management company.

Running a commercial property can get overwhelming at times and can be too much for just a few people to do. To take pressure of a board of directors, the best thing to do is to hire Management Company to take care of your commercial property, which will make sure everything is organized and running smoothly.

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It is important to Develop Leaders who can bring out the best in any team

28-Dec-10

It’s essential for any organization to develop leaders who can bring out the best in any team. In fact, it has been shown that whenever there is effective team communication, it can lead to a 29.5% increase in market share (Watson Wyatt Worldwide, 2003). However, many leaders are unaware of the problems that happen in teams, and they simply rely on gut feel rather than on scientific literature to improve their chances leading in the field.

Why this is important

We are in an ever-changing world where better prospects are out there somewhere. Leaders who have a terrible rapport with their team members will end up having less cooperation, and most likely, the people who dislike you will leave. This, after all, is one of the most frequent reasons why people leave an organization – misalignment of vision. Where are they most likely to go to? Well, a competitor!

In the research literature about teams, we know that relationship conflict creates problems in teams, often causing interpersonal friction (Jehn, 1995), and what the common person calls ‘corporate politics’. When things get personal, it is highly unlikely that an individual will trust their team members very much. As a result of this, individuals begin to build reaction mechanisms to the environment they are working in. However, it is recognized that task conflict (those related to work) often generate better ideas and lead to better solutions (De Dreu, 2006). The problem is that when there is poor trust, even task conflict causes problems in teams.

Leaders who have new members who are new hands on deck may also find it challenging. Idealistic and young individuals often have a mind of their own, and do not cope very well with conflict simply because they are inexperienced at handling such emotions head on. In fact, good leaders are often the ones who are able to experience the relationship conflicts at hand and still sift out the relevant task required elements due to their experience working with others. Olson, Parayitam and Bao (2007) suggest that the way to manage this is to increase competence based trust. Kouzes and Posner (2004) also have written that competence is one of the most highly admired attributes of a leader.

What does this all mean

I think the most important element in the leader would be his ability to shift perspectives. When you do this, it enables you to understand where team members are coming from. Through your experience, you have to also be able and willing to tell them that things aren’t as they expect. Relationship conflict can still exist in a detrimental manner if a team has not had opportunities to learn from each other. This indicates that a leader’s principle role is to create an environment where teams can develop each other’s capabilities by sharing knowledge with one another.

By being level headed and getting different members of the team to focus on the task and leave aside relationship conflict, a leader asserts his essential role as the skipper of the ship, and awareness of biases and problems associated with ineffective information sharing and team learning can enable the leader to advise and mentor his own group toward desired results.

Furthermore, the leader needs to take advantage of diverse opinions to achieve greater results. This can only be done if you know how best to create team rapport, getting different individuals to recognize their own personal biases and personality tendencies, and also show them the best approach to pre-empt such problems within the team environment, such as using a personality profiling tool.

Such capabilities and competencies are learnable. To find out more about such team leadership training programs that maximize returns, contact me for additional information by filling the comments out below (the comment will not be published if it is an inquiry for training consultation).

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Americans Planning a Better Financial Future

10-Dec-10

Millions of Americans are recession-weary and wondering how to plan for a better financial future in the days ahead. In some ways, the recession has provided valuable financial lessons and an understanding of various financial instruments from mortgages to first time free payday loans. As Americans struggled to get a handle on their financial lives, they were given a crash course on what to do and what not to do in a bad economic environment and some lessons are clearly hard-won.

Mortgages

The housing disaster has made an impression on everyone, particularly new home buyers. While no doc loans are no longer even available, the general public has come to the understanding that the traditional fixed loans were the better deal. New home buyers are even opting for shorter mortgage terms, using the 15-year loans to reduce the risk of carrying a mortgage that can weigh heavily if someone loses a job in the family.

Payday Loans and Merchant Loans

These alternative loans were vilified by conventional banking institutions, but ultimately proved to be the only source of lending available during the tight business climate for business owners and consumers with bad credit. The importance of setting aside credit lines that are available during bad times far outweighed the high interest rates. These types of loans have more customers than ever before, and may remain high in popularity for their easy access to credit even in good times.

Car Loans

Millennials are the largest indicator of the change in the mindset of the average consumer. A hefty car loan is not seen as entirely necessary, and in fact can be a liability with high gas prices and decreasing incomes. Instead, consumers are choosing to either go for less expensive models or forgo the car entirely and take public transportation, eliminating much of this consumer debt that can last for years with little assets to show for it.

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The Benefits of Inventory Clerks for Your Property Inventories

30-Nov-10

Inventory clerks compile and maintain records of quantity, type, and value of all kinds of stock and assets. Inventory is a documentation of the total amount of materials in any establishment at a given time. It helps the owners to know their possessions and requirements in order to run a business. An inventory of property refers to a complete record of all the enclosed contents and their condition within a residentially and commercially owned land.

Importance Of Property Inventory

This inventory prevents a lot of disputes between tenants and landowners. Professional inventory clerks help in managing and preserving investments or assets of landowners, holiday companies, housing associations and so forth. Their commercial property services include estate and block management inspections, post-work inspections, public house tenancy checks and insurance claim checks among many others. The inventory services also include damage and dilapidation reports.

Property inventories give a clear representation of all things present in a rented house before a tenant moves in. These records would help to determine any damage or loss of items, when the tenant moves out. They help the owner to claim the costs of damage or loss, legally from the tenant. On the other hand, they help the tenants to safeguard themselves from false damage claims by the landowner.

Course Of The Inventory

Inventory clerks prepare the inventory with the approval of the tenant on move-in day. They show the property to the tenant at the time of checking in. Amendments will be made to the inventory, if the tenant points out any discrepancies. The compiled detailed report, produced in a professional format, agreed and duly signed by both the parties is the inventory. A more meticulous inventory is preferred when the value of the items is high by opting for a photographic or video evidence of the property contents.

Inventory inspections on a quarterly basis help in monitoring rental conditions of the house during the course of the tenancy. A final inventory check is made just before the move-out day. If the contents and conditions of the house are in accordance with the original inventory, the initial deposit is returned to the tenant. Inventory clerks make sure this final check is done before the tenant moves out to avoid any possible disputes.

Advantages Of The Profession

Inventory clerks can start an independent business with very little investment. The business offers high income potential and little competition. It requires no staff. Documentation is very easy with new software tools.

The high demand for these professionals is due to the legalization of the Tenancy Deposit Scheme. Accordingly, all deposits taken by the landowners must be protected under the scheme. This has increased the need and demand for clear, reasonable, and reliable high quality inventories to protect both parties in the event of a tenancy dispute.

Inventory services of sub-standard quality will boomerang the landowner. In such a case, the disputes go in favour of the tenant. Therefore, Inventory clerks are required to protect the landowner’s assets more securely, and give them more time to rent or sell properties and provide them with an added income stream.

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How to Raise Money from Factoring

29-Nov-10

Firms can raise money for their business by selling their accounts receivables to someone else that will collect them on their behalf. What the other person will charge is a discount for taking up the responsibility of collection. This process is called factoring. Factoring can nowadays be used by any kind of business to raise money not like a while back when it used to be used only by businesses, which were not financially stable. So a business can get money through accounts receivable factoring.

In a company balance sheet, accounts receivables are also classified as finance assets and for that reason they can be used to get money for various uses within the business. All one needs to do is to get the other two parties to the transactions, the parties to a factoring process are the factor, the debtors and the seller. What the seller needs to do is to transfer its debts to the factor that will give him cash and do the collection himself.

In this process a firm does not consider the credit of a company, so they don’t need to have financial security to qualify, only the accounts receivables. This makes factoring a good source of investment, especially for small firms that may have difficulty securing loans from banks.

When businesses need money within a very short time, this process of factoring is preferable as there are no long procedures to follow in order to get the money, it can also be a long term process of raising the money as long as one is still in business and still has receivables.

There are also companies, who fail banks criteria of getting money through loans either because they are still small, or they do not have enough security to give to the bank or their capital base is not big enough. These companies can use factoring to raise money to improve their capital base or to cover all other financial obligation to enable them qualify for the bank loan for further business expansion.

Even if accounts receivables are finance assets to a business, they can default on their obligations and thus become a burden to a company, it will also interfere with a companyfinancial obligation position. With factoring all these risks are transferred to a factor and in the process improve a company’s cash flow position. The factor through experience is in a better position to collect money from the debtors.

Factoring does not tie a company down, as there are no long-term contracts done, there are no long term, resources involved. The business gets its money and is free to concentrate on its other obligations without worrying of the implication resulting from the source of money unlike a bank loan.

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