Topic: Number of Office Employees Per Apartment Community

Over in the maintenance discussion category, we've had an amazing debate regarding the appropriate number of maintenance techs required for an apartment community .

Now, I'd like to shift that discussion to the office team. How many total office on-site team members is appropriate for a community? (let's include anybody who works in the office on-site, including property manager, assistant PM, leasing consultants, etc)

(Please give the number of units managed, as well, so we can compare properly!)

For me, 3 full time staff for a 244 unit property is a good fit. Myself, my Customer Service Manager (resident billing / leasing) and a Solutions Provider (leasing) is perfect. Allows each of us time with residents and prospects as well as property face time and paperwork. We go down to 1 person on the weekends.

I am interested to hear from on-site managers how the ratio of apartments to team members may differ from the service side to the office/administrative side and why.

Working on the temporary side in property management, I'd say it would probaly depend on the age of community. We often see where older properties may temp maintenance out when the A/C season hits because of the age. More work for maintenance, but not necessarily more work for office.

I have always felt like the industry standard 1 person per 100 units is a good fit inside and outside. Recently, I have started on an older portfolio with some maintenance concerns. I only have 103 units, but im thinking a part timer would be a GREAT advantage on the ofc and maint side even if just temporarily.

It has been my experience that 80 units (between 2 buildings max) per staff member has been efficient.

I, alone, manage 141 units across 4 buildings in a 20 mile radius and I can attest that I'm never caught up completely with everything. Nearly all my time is spent on leasing & depositing rents/3 day notices that I've realized lately I havent even been able to manage my tenants/buildings properly. I've been keeping things afloat but am looking into a more manageable situation (PT assistant at least).

With my property averaging 83:1, I am going to go the opposite way and say that I wish I had another staff too! Granted, I am probably spoiled in that I have as much office staff as I do, but for me, more office staff means more facetime with residents and future residents, both inside the office and out. One of my favorite pieces of my day is getting time to be physically on the property (outside of the office). Chatting with residents, picking up the property, helping the maintenance team. If i can address a maintenance issue as a resident reports it to me, without having to fill out the work order and make them wait for an hour to get the guys there, I do. The relationship between residents and property staff is a crucial make or break issue. It's not good enough to just bethe voice at the other end of the phone, they need to know faces and have a connection there.

Tara, you bring up a great issue regarding what do property management companies want to actually gain from their on-site teams. They can probably "get by" with a bare bones staff that gets the essentials done, but that also probably puts them in the 60% average turnover our industry faces. Or they can see additional labor as an investment - having an extra part-time person is going to be an additional $10,000 per year, but you would then expect that person's efforts to directly impact retention rates, rent increases on renewals, etc to result in a net gain.

That is a risk of course, so the returns better be risk-adjusted to compensate...

This is a great discussion. With our properties, we keep our site staff at 1 manager to properties under 100 units. Properties in excess of 100 units typically have 2 or more personnel on-site. With that, at smaller properties that do not require on-site personnel, we will typically have a nearby Resident Manager assist with leasing and resident relations and they are compensated accordingly.

Once one of our properties becomes "red flagged" as having an issue with expenses or vacancies that sit un-rented for an extended period of time, we have expert leasers on our staff that assist our resident managers until the vacants are filled. We try to leverage our staff as best as possible.

Hi! I manage a 730 unit/17 building community built in 1970. I have 3 Leasing Consultants, a Leasing Director and an Assistant Manager. On the maintenance side...a Service Supervisor, Coordinator/Scheduler, Asst. Lead Tech, 5 Techs and 3 part time Fitness/pool attendants. Being a busy and older community...in the summer I could use an additional LC and always more maintenance! When I began last July, we were 85% occupied and 97% now...my team has done incredibly...but can honstly say my techs are always behind with the work load ( preventive maintenance was not a focus previously, sad to say) and my expectations!!

I work for a community with 356 units and we have 2 Full Time Leasing Specialist, Community Manager and Assistant Manager in the office and we have a maintaince supervisor, Full Time Tech along with Groundskeeper. I think we do quite well with what we have!

I manage a 500 Class C 35 year old property and have 2 Leasing Consultants, 1 Assistant Manager and 1 part time Accountant. I think you also need to take into consideration as to whether accounts payable, collections, etc are done on site or by the Management Company. We handle this on site. Yes, an additional employee would always be nice in order to provide even better customer service. Although we find that having some employees on salary helps us stay on top of things with working longer hours during those peak days of the month.

Great discussion everyone and this opens up further communication on how to justify staffing. The factors are age, previous maintenance and repair trends, type of physical and mechanical systems (i.e. heat pumps versus heat strip systems or baseboard heating in some location) general asset conditions, what resident services are included such as activities (i.e. a senior community that has multiple events takes more time in planning/scheduling/holding than does a conventional community that has one main event every other month), number of apartments, how effective is leadership and the team members, what responsibilities are to be handled by the team, etc.

This is why it is difficult to find one straight answer to this questions. No two properties are the same, therefore one boilerplate answer maynot be ideal. Tasks such as A/P processing, reporting, etc. may be different from one management company/owner from another.

Keep it up and let's hear more about what staffing you have as well as specific responsibilities that justify that staffing. This type of discussion helps all of us understand more of how tasks/responsibilities and the different types of sites create a variety of needs.

At my company, we've found that 1 inside per 80-90 units is about right. In addition to unit counts, we weigh weekly and monthly walk-in and phone traffic, so sometimes we do staff a bit heavier than this if the properties are in high-traffic areas. Nobody likes to wait, and we can't afford to put up barriers to leasing! Texas is also a very seasonal market so at some properties we at a temporary Summer Leasing Consultant to help pick up the additional traffic.

Interesting conversation. We are more on the affordable side than conventional. Which means my paperwork is through the roof whether it's LIHTC or Project based subsidy - or even both on some of our communities! Have some of you on the affordable side found it necessary to staff a little higher to handle this administrative workload? We have all our applications processed at the site before they are reviewed by our compliance department. I know some companies have all the apps processed at a central location and the site staff only gathers the initial application info. Thanx for sharing.

I think 1 per 100 units is an very old model. In the old days sites were not open 7 days per week and didn't do extended hours as we do today. In the midwest most communities do extended hours in the warmer months to provide better customer service. With extended hours and opening 7 days per week, 1 person for each 100 units needs to be revisited.

While the recent economy has played a factor on this determination per property the steadfast rule of one per 100 units has always seemed to work. Other factors such as lease ups and fractured condo deals would vary from this formula. So a 500 unit property would have 5 in the office and 5 in maintenance. A lease up would be 6 or 7 and a fractured deal could be 3 or 4.

When I was General Manager for a company managing 4,700 units and a commercial laundry operation I had 16 people (including myself) for close to one for every 300 units. This included in-house paralegal staff. Joon before I left I initiated some technological changes that could actually reduce it down to 12.

Good day!

I manage 144 units. It is just me in the office M-F, then Sat & Sun 1 Leasing Agent. We also have 1 maintenance tech during the week. So a total of 3 employees here.

i work full time, 30 hour a week, at a public housing authority. i have a case load of 456 units. I have one coworker and we do it all from lease up to move out, rent calc and compliance,interviews once a year for each tenant and rent collection

This topic has been debated for years and I don’t ever expect to come to a conclusion. In my opinion staffing has a direct correlation to customer service, therefore you should staff as much as you can afford. Unit counts, property age and condition all contribute mostly to the skill-set requirements and should be considered in your evaluations.

With that said, customer service has direct correlation on leasing which has a direct correlation on NOI… Adequate staffing likely has a direct correlation on employee tenure… Well?!? That sure is a lot of correlating, isn’t it?

I have seen countless advertisements that state that “Our People Are Our Number One Resource…” or "Our People Make the Differance..." If that is true, you should be doing all you can do get more and retain more people…

Only modifcation I would make to Chris's statement is related to customer service, as I believe it has a stronger impact on something more important and that is resident retention and not necessarily leasing. Great points as well on all the factors and the debate continuing.

Well, I personally love using the old rule of 1 person for each hundred units, but of course many different communities have their own unique challenges. For example, for a large affordable housing community, I might go over the 1 person for each hundred units, simply because I might have an onsite compliance agent or an activity director. Same thing for a high-end rental, I might go over the 1 person for each hundred units to add a resident coordinator or front desk personnel. However, I do try to stay at 1 person for each hundred unit or less if possible. Hope this helps!

I have 400 apartments. I only have two technicians.

That's not enough ... unless it is a brand new community built less than a year ago.

I abhor that old 1 per 100 rule! This came from a time when communities had rental managers, not community managers. Back then all that was required of a manager was to collect rent and lease apartments; the focus was not customer driven. Now in the age of stiff competition it's just not practical.
One of my first communities was 187 units. At first I ran it alone. It wasn't that bad as we had a separate office to handle maintenance, the leases automatically renewed, and renewal offers came from the accounting office. Rent was collected offsite and posted by accounting, & notice of default was also handled by accounting. (Boy those were the good old days :) The change happened when a new community popped up next door and started getting some of our residents. The need for more staff to focus on customer service was realized and I got an assistant.
Now I have a 163 unit 62+ 80% TC 20% MKT community, and there are only two of us. We are NEVER caught up on paperwork because in my book residents take priority. Anyone who's worked with seniors knows they take up much more of your time. I have a dream of hiring a part-time concierge to handle the little things like faxing or copying documents for residents, looking up directions, helping them understand how to read credit card statements, planning activities and all the little things we do to make our residents happy. For now we'll just keep plugging along :)
It’s just not realistic to think you can stick to some arbitrary number when each and every community is different.

I'm so lucky my management company doesn't adhere to that old 1/100 rule. :)

I have 83 units in one 40 year old building, a full time maintenance tech/porter, and a part time assistant manager for janitorial and weekend office coverage.

There is no way one person could move our dumpster into the street by 6am, be in the office 9am-6pm every day, and then do maintenance.

Is there a law in California regarding the number of office staff per units? Or maintenance techs on site?

Well Brent, as you know the typical rule is 1 body for each 100 units for both roles. So a 100 unit community would have 1 office and 1 maintenance person. However, experience tells us that this formula doesn't always work. For example, you could have a brand new lease up, of which the rules change. You probably would only have 1 maintenance guy, and approximately 2 to 3 leasing staff onsite to complete a fast lease up and marketing. Or you could have a distress older property with a bunch of maintenance needs, in which the office team might fall into the rule of 1 body for each 100 units, but in the maintenance field you might have to increase that by 50%. I guess, there is no true formula to really get this down to a science, but actually each asset needs to be evaluated individually. Just my opinion from experience.

I feel spoiled reading through this forum. At my property, we have 196 units and 3 full-time office employees, which include a Leasing Consultant, Assistant Community Manager, and Community Manager. We also have a Social Service director who coordinates events and deals directly with resident disputes/misc. issues three times a month. Even though we have a strong staff, an extra office staff member would be ideal! Of course, we are a mixed-income property with 135 Tax Credit apartments. So, our administrative workload is significantly high.

As for maintenance, we have a porter, maintenance tech, and maintenance supervisor. They're extremely efficient at balancing work orders .vs. turns and are pretty good about meeting deadlines for turns.

I agree; each property has it's own unique issues and therefore a lot needs to be considered before determining what is best for the property. These things include, but are not limited to:

1) Age of the property.
2) Number of units.
3) Turnover trends.
4) What work is contracted out as opposed to being done in house.
5) If it is conventional, affordable, subsidized, or mixed.
6) If site personnel are negotiating contracts for vendors.
7) If site personnel are initiating the accounts payable process.


I was at a property that had 2 team members; myself as the manager, and a maintenance manager. At this property:

1) 40+ year old property with a rehab completed within the last 5 years.
2) 66 units
3) 17 vacancies when I arrived, spiked to as many as 25 for cause; reduced to 3 within a year.
4) All work done in house; but with so many vacancies, help was brought in to complete turns.
5) This property was affordable tax credit for 55+.
6) I negotiated contracts with many vendors (and reduced expenses by about $40k per year by changing some things about how they were done)
7) I also initiated the accounts payable process (although I later learned there were over $100k in unpaid bills at the time the owner transferred management from one company to another who kept me in place). There were times when I was concerned which bills would get paid and if I could make purchases that were needed to meet expectations. I have had vendors call to fire me(the property) for non payment.

My current community is 288 units, my last was 184. At my current community there are 3 of us in the office and have 20-25 pieces of traffic per week. I would love to have a part-time person to take the slack when the leasing person has a day off. Now my community with 184 units was lucky to have 10-12 pieces of traffic a week. In the winter time we really only needed a part-time leasing person. Smaller city, slower pace. Both communities were about 10 years old.

Outside staffing was at three, lead, assistant and housekeeper. I know a lot of companies are moving away from having housekeepers on staff and just contracting out but I don't agree this is beneficial.

Now I managed a community that was 420 units and I had two leasing, an assistant and myself but outside I had a lead, one tech, one make-ready, one housekeeper and two porters because of the acreage of the community.

I think it should start with the model of 1 per 100 but consider all the other factors involved.

One maintenance technician and one manager

Idk about all states but Arkansas Grace Hill says there should never be one leasing agent or an employee working alone. Because it could become a safety hazard.

I'm just starting out and got my first condo management deal. I really need a Management Contract for a 200 unit Condo building. Do you have a boilerplate contract I can use??
Thanks
Ben
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