Commercial property management often gets compared to the hospitality or service industry, and more specifically a similar dynamic to a restaurant atmosphere. The owner of the property is the owner of the restaurant, the property manager is the waiter/waitress, and the tenants are the customers. A sound comparison, right? Not exactly.
In a restaurant, the server’s main priority is to make the customer happy, to create the best dining experience possible for the patron. In commercial property management, you always want the tenant to be happy, but you also have to remember who your boss is. As a property manager, the owner of a property has hired you and has agreed to pay you a certain percentage of the gross monthly rent collected. In return, it is your job to run the property exactly how the owner wants it to be done.
Whether that means enforcing rent increases, collecting rent in a timely manner, charging late fees, keeping property expenses down, etc.; remember – the owner hired you to do the things that he/she either can’t or does not want to have to do. That doesn’t mean it’s your job to make the tenants mad, but it is your job to maximize the value of the property and to run the property according to however the owner desires. So unlike a server in a restaurant, where the customer always comes first, a commercial property manager can’t forget who they need to keep happy: the owner.
