Building and Staff Performance Reviews

Knowing and understanding your building is critical to its success. Owners that self manage one or two buildings have a huge advantage in this regard. They are frequently at their buildings and generally know every tenant on a first name basis. Larger property owners and those that must delegate responsibility to a staff do not have this advantage. How then can a larger property owner or property manager truly understand what is going on in their buildings?

Sierra Realty has implemented an annual review process that goes a long way to solving this problem. Each year we send out a questionnaire to every one of our tenants asking them to rate their building, building staff, management staff, etc. The questionnaire also solicits suggestions about what can be done to improve the building. When we first started doing this, we figured only a small percentage of tenants would respond and probably only those that wanted to complain would take the time. I've been very surprised at the level response that we receive. Over 20% of our tenants respond and usually provide very favorable and valuable feedback about the building. As result, we have been able to obtain a far better understanding of how our buildings operate and our staff function.