Making the Case for a Property Management Department

By Jonathan Nicholas, ABR, CRB, CRS, GRI, Real Estate Business Magazine, June/July 2007

In the mid-1980s, one of the large national real estate franchises suggested to their franchisees that they should consider opening property management and leasing departments within their brokerages. For those who can remember the market back then, selling a home was a year to two-year proposition in many locales — not to mention the negative amortization, declining property values and high interest rates. The solution was to offer leasing and management services for those clients who couldn't afford to keep making payments on vacant properties, especially those who had already moved on to other homes.