When you look outside your window as you drive through the freeway, or as you pull into your gated community or apartments, you will see hundreds if not thousands of residences and buildings. These buildings, though they may seem somewhat inactive and passive, require a lot of maintenance and management, and unless you live or visit constantly, you will not see this behind the scenes activity. Property managers are essential, and so we will be discussing some of the business courses that property managers need to be familiar with in order to be successful.
Property management is the oversight, operating, and control of certain types of real estate. In this case, real estate being anything from apartment buildings, single-family residences, office buildings, and commercial spaces. If you want to be a property manager like Brian Setencich, then below you will find some of the business courses that will help you be a good property manager.
- NARPM 101: Basics of Property Management
- Marketing for Residential Property Management
- Tenancy
- Owner Relationships
- Essentials of Risk Management
- Hiring and Firing: Essentials of Personnel
- Intro to Maintenance
- Policies and Procedures
- Cashflow Analysis
Overview
These are just a few of the courses you can take to get a good sense of what it takes to be a property manager. They are mostly basic courses, but an overview of all the courses you can take, from beginner to super advanced and technical. You can also look at Brian Setencich and what he’s doing. Because you can’t be great at something by simply taking a course on the subject, you will have to constantly update your knowledge and balance what you learned on the course with the real experience you’re having in the “trenches”. Sometimes there will be things that happen while you’re managing a property that was not covered in the courses and so you’re stuck. At this point, it is essential that you seek mentors in real life and discuss what happened so that they can guide you in the right direction. Things evolve, and some of those courses may be outdated. Learn from real life mentors already ahead of you.
Software Knowledge
Some of the other courses you can learn as well, if you don’t know about them already are courses on Quickbooks (billing and accounting software), LivePlan (business plans in case you want to grow your property management business), social media marketing on sites like Udemy (in order to be up-to-date on social media), customer relations management (CRM) software so that you keep all your relationships in one place and know what documents each one is attached to. Finally, an Excel spreadsheet course will be essential no matter what business you’re in.
In conclusion, in this article, we spoke about some of the courses that property managers need to take, and gave a brief summary of what property management is. There were about twenty other courses, some very advanced, that we didn’t list such as cash flow management, but with a quick google search or following the links we provided you’ll be able to find out what they are. Maybe you’ve already taken a lot of these courses and are looking to grow your property management business. Hopefully, you’ve learned enough to take the advanced courses, but if you’re starting out, this article will be a great introduction to the topic.