What Do Property Managers Really Do?
When I had my first W-2 job, I worked for a rental car company in a little shopping center. One morning, there were some donuts sitting in the break room. I asked my boss who brought them so I could thank them, and she said, “Oh, it was the property manager.”
I had only worked there for a few months, and I was pretty much at the bottom of the information food chain, but I had never met the property manager. I had never heard anyone talk about the property manager. Honestly, I didn’t even know that a “property manager” was a thing. The concept was completely foreign to me. (Please forgive my naivety.)
I had never really thought about the shopping center itself. I don't think it had even occurred to me that someone owned the property. I didn't think about who our company paid rent to, how we ended up in that space, what our lease required, how the expenses for the shopping center were divided up, or who was making decisions about the property behind the scenes.
I didn't think about the budgets, contracts, insurance, other tenants, or the dozens of things that had to happen for our little shopping center to operate every day. Beyond that, I had no idea there was an entire business happening around the property that I couldn't see.
Years later, I became the person bringing the donuts.
Fresh out of college, I got an entry-level job at a commercial real estate company as a property administrator at a Class A office building in downtown Salt Lake City. While my main responsibilities were checking the mail, delivering access badges to new employees, and answering the phone, I was also exposed to budgets, leases, ownership calls, and thorough property inspections. And somewhere along the way, I learned just how much was happening behind the curtain that I never knew existed.
When I first started my career in property management, my dad would call me and ask about my new job. I would tell him what I had been working on that day, but I don’t think he could ever quite wrap his head around the scope of what I actually did, because you can’t really summarize property management in a few phone calls or a few stories.
And I don't blame him.
From the outside, property management might seem pretty straightforward. You collect the rent, hire contractors when something breaks, make sure the landscaping looks good, and deal with tenants when they need something.
We do all of those things, but that barely scratches the surface.
I think it is genuinely hard to grasp how much goes into professionally managing a commercial property until you have actually done it, and even then, you could always be doing more. On any given day, we could be reviewing financials, working through a lease, meeting a contractor, inspecting a property, dealing with a tenant request, comparing bids, planning a capital project, reviewing insurance requirements, working through a budget, or trying to figure out why an expense doesn't look right.
And usually, several of those things are connected.
More Than Putting Out Fires
Obviously, like anyone else who works in real estate, I have plenty of stories about things that have gone wrong: complicated property damage, strange maintenance calls, and tenants who weren't exactly happy to hear what their lease said. Those stories are usually the most entertaining ones to tell, but they can also give the wrong impression of what property management really is.
We aren't just here to put out fires. Our job is making sure fewer fires happen in the first place.
That means maintaining the property instead of waiting for things to fail. It means understanding the financials well enough to know when something doesn't make sense. It means knowing the leases and making sure they are being followed. It means building relationships with tenants and vendors, regularly inspecting the property, planning for major expenses, and giving ownership the information they need to make good decisions.
That's also why professional property management matters.
It isn't that an owner can't collect rent, pay an invoice, call a contractor, or talk to a tenant. Of course they can. The value is having someone whose job is to look at the entire property and understand how all of those pieces work together.
Managing the Day-to-Day Operations
This is probably the part of property management most people picture: something breaks, the property manager calls a contractor, and it gets fixed. And yes, we do plenty of that. But good property operations should be much more proactive than reactive.
A good property manager (PM) regularly walks and inspects their properties. You learn what normal looks like, which makes it easier to notice when something isn’t. A small roof leak, damaged asphalt, a leaking sprinkler, or an HVAC unit making a strange noise may not seem significant today, but catching it early can prevent a much larger problem later.
Preventative maintenance is a big part of that. Roofs need to be inspected, HVAC units serviced, drains cleared, fire systems tested, landscaping maintained, and dozens of other things need attention before they fail. A good PM is thinking about what needs attention now and what will need attention a few years from now.
And when work does need to be done, we aren't just calling the local handyman for everything. A good PM builds a network of qualified vendors who specialize in their trades and knows who to call for the job. We define the scope, compare bids, coordinate access, communicate with tenants, oversee the work, and make sure we get what we paid for.
Commercial properties also have tenants who are running businesses, which makes that coordination important. You can’t always shut off the water when it’s convenient for the plumber or tear up the parking lot wherever the paving crew wants to start. As property managers, we try never to get in the way of a tenant running their business if we can help it.
A lot of the best property management is work nobody notices. The roof doesn't leak because someone caught a problem during an inspection. The HVAC keeps running because it was serviced before summer. The parking lot gets repaired without turning the property into chaos.
When operations are managed well, the property can feel almost uneventful. There is usually quite a bit happening behind the scenes to keep it that way.
Managing the Money
The most obvious financial responsibility of a property manager is collecting rent. A tenant owes $10,000 on the first, you make sure $10,000 shows up. On the surface, that seems pretty easy.
But a good PM is paying attention to a lot more than whether the rent came in. They need to understand what every tenant should be paying, make sure CAM (common area maintenance) and other reimbursements are being charged and collected correctly, track expenses against the budget, review invoices, negotiate contracts, and make sure the property’s money is being spent wisely.
Relationships play a surprisingly big role in that. A PM who has good rapport with their tenants can often resolve a past-due balance or disputed charge with a phone call instead of immediately escalating it. When you know your tenants and they trust that you've been fair with them, difficult conversations about money tend to be a lot more productive.
The same is true with vendors. Good vendor relationships can mean better pricing, faster service, and more honest conversations about what a property or building actually needs. A vendor you trust might tell you that a $10,000 replacement can be repaired for $1,500, sharpen their pencil on a bid, or tell you that a project can safely wait another year. Over an entire property, those decisions add up quickly.
And when a property isn't cash flowing the way it should, a good PM gets to the bottom of it. Is a tenant delinquent? Are CAM estimates too low? Did utilities spike? Are we paying for something we don't need? Are there expenses that should be reimbursed by tenants but aren't?
Sometimes that means digging through the general ledger, pulling leases, reviewing invoices, talking with accounting, calling tenants, or comparing expenses against prior years until you find the answer. Then you do something about it.
The goal isn't simply to collect more money or spend less. It's to understand how the property is performing, recognize when something doesn't look right, and make good decisions with the property's money. And a PM who knows the leases, understands the numbers, and has strong relationships with the tenants and vendors is in a much better position to do that.
There are hundreds of decisions made throughout the year that affect how a property operates, what it costs to run, the experience of the tenants, and ultimately the value of the asset. Most of those decisions aren't particularly exciting, and many of them happen completely behind the scenes.
But they add up.
Managing the Lease, the People, and Everything in Between
A big part of property management is managing both the relationship between the owner and the tenant, and the agreement that defines that relationship… the lease.
Commercial leases can be hundreds of pages long, and every tenant’s lease can be different. A good PM needs to know them well enough to administer them every day. Who is responsible for the HVAC? Can the tenant install a sign? Who pays for a plumbing repair? Is an expense recoverable through CAM? When does the rent increase? Does ownership need to approve the tenant’s construction?
The answer is rarely just “That’s how we normally do it” or “That’s how other people do it.” The lease matters, but so do the circumstances.
A good property manager learns how to work in that middle ground. We represent ownership and protect their interests, but we also work with the tenants every day. Sometimes that means enforcing the lease. Other times it means finding a reasonable solution to something the lease never anticipated. Having a good relationship with both sides makes those conversations considerably easier.
Take a tenant who wants to install a new sign. On the surface, it sounds simple: hire a sign company, make a rendering, and put it on the building.
But does the lease allow it? Does it comply with the property's sign criteria? Does ownership need to approve the design? Does the city require a permit? How will it attach to the building? Will that damage the exterior? And what happens to the sign and the holes it leaves behind when the tenant eventually moves out?
The PM becomes the person who sorts through those questions, gets the right information from the tenant, coordinates with the sign company, brings ownership in where a decision is needed, and makes sure something as simple as putting a sign on a building doesn't create a problem later.
And that's really one of the biggest reasons property management exists.
An owner or asset manager could do all of these things themselves, but then a large part of their day would be spent reading lease provisions, answering tenant calls, reviewing bids, following up with vendors, approving invoices,
and don’t forget about tracking down rent,
AND figuring out why there is a puddle behind Suite 4.
A good property manager handles the hundreds of day-to-day decisions and problems that come with owning commercial real estate, while giving ownership the information they need to make the decisions that actually require their attention. The two roles are completely different. We don't replace the owner or asset manager. We make it possible for them to focus on the bigger picture without having to personally manage everything it takes to keep the property running.
So, What Does a Property Manager Actually Do?
So when someone asks me what a property manager actually does, there still isn't a very short answer.
There is an old saying: “Jack of all trades, master of none.” Property managers might be the exception. We aren’t attorneys, contractors, accountants, roofers, HVAC technicians, landscapers, or leasing agents, but on any given day we may need to speak the language of every one of them. Some days, we need to bring them all together. We know enough to ask the right questions, recognize when something doesn’t look right, and know when to bring in someone who knows more than we do.
Maybe we're jacks of all trades and pretty good at most of them.
And if we're doing our jobs well, a lot of what we do will go unnoticed. The property operates, the bills get paid, the rent gets collected, problems get solved, tenants can run their businesses, and ownership has an asset that is being looked after.
And, every once in a while, we might even bring some donuts.
Looking for a property manager who treats your property like an asset, not a list of work orders? Connect with Wil Guymon and the Forza Management team, managing commercial properties across Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a commercial property manager do?
A commercial property manager runs a property’s day-to-day operations, finances, and lease administration on behalf of ownership. That includes inspecting the property, scheduling preventative maintenance, hiring and overseeing vendors, collecting rent, making sure CAM charges are billed correctly, tracking the budget, and working with tenants.
What is CAM in commercial real estate?
CAM stands for common area maintenance: the cost of operating the shared parts of a property, such as parking lots, landscaping, and snow removal. Depending on the lease, tenants reimburse their share of those costs, and the property manager makes sure they’re charged and collected correctly.
What’s the difference between a property manager and an asset manager?
The property manager handles the hundreds of day-to-day decisions and problems that come with running a property. The owner or asset manager focuses on the bigger picture, and the property manager gives them the information they need to make the decisions that actually require their attention.
Why hire a professional property manager?
An owner can collect rent, pay invoices, and call contractors. The value of a professional property manager is having someone whose job is to look at the entire property, understand how all of those pieces work together, and catch small problems before they become expensive ones.
Related Reading
Wil Guymon is a property manager at Forza Management in Salt Lake City.
Comments