In most industries, winter is the slowest part of the year. Property Management is no exception.
The feverish nature of the summer months drains our staff. The Property Managers are overwhelmed with vacancies and the leasing agents with applications. The receptionist grows prematurely grey with the flood of calls besieging her phone and the deluge of emails pouring into her inbox. We are always grateful when the winter rolls around and the responsibilities of our staff begin to decrease in number and urgency.
The slow season is essential for our office. Without it, our staff would simply burn out and break. They cannot keep up the frenzied pace of the summer months all year round. But while we view this time as a hard-earned break, there is one other use we put to it.
Empire is always trying to improve, but it is difficult to do so in the middle of summer. We can barely keep up with the interest flooding in, let alone change the procedures. Winter is our only time to do so.
We go through the data collected from the summer and evaluate where we spent the most time. Afterward, we look and see where the amount of expended effort can be reduced.
As is normal, Empire has several small changes in the works. Most of them are on the side of the staff, little things that will streamline their work and make it easier to handle. Other changes involve making it simpler for prospective applicants, which we hope will reduce vacancy time. We test these changes on a reduced audience, and once we are certain that they will be an improvement, we set it as the company-wide standard.
The gap is not a large one; it begins late November and lasts into mid-February. It is a small window, but we are careful to put it to good use. When the summer rolls around again, Empire will be ready.
Happy landlording!