Interview with Diana Heumüller, ALBA
You have been Sales Director at ALBA Property Management since May 2011, but you didn’t start out in property management. Has that been an advantage or disadvantage for you?
Diana Heumüller: I mostly see it as an advantage for our clients. Since this was a new area for me, I worked extremely hard to bring myself up to speed and looked at a lot of different processes, which often gave me a superior insight into opportunities for improvement. Additionally, as a former commercial property agent, I can provide a fundamentally different perspective on things: I understand exactly what our clients want, what their requirements are and what problems they are faced with time and again. I address these points as soon as we acquire a new client and then pass them onto our property managers when we make the transition to regular management. This means our clients can rest assured that they are in good hands and that the employees responsible for them know what they have to pay particular attention to.
Can you give an example of these recurring problems?
Diana Heumüller: They are issues that are familiar in everyday business. When you talk to property owners, the main thing they want from property managers is for them to be proactive. A good property manager anticipates problems and doesn’t just wait to be called about them – because by then, it’s often too late. For example, if investors or surveyors inspect their portfolios once or twice a year, the client must be able to depend on all properties in the portfolio being in top condition. The property manager must carefully prepare for such inspections in advance. The same applies to the familiar scenario of viewing properties with prospective tenants: the worst case for the client is that the property is in a bad state on the day of the viewing or that the property cannot be viewed at all because the responsible property manager has no free capacity and can’t be there. After that, it’s often impossible to get a prospective tenant to come to a new viewing. For this reason, it’s important that property managers fulfil their obligations and always take time, before and after accepting a commission, to ensure they have sufficient capacity and know all they need to know about the property in question.
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Diana Heumüller: I mostly see it as an advantage for our clients. Since this was a new area for me, I worked extremely hard to bring myself up to speed and looked at a lot of different processes, which often gave me a superior insight into opportunities for improvement. Additionally, as a former commercial property agent, I can provide a fundamentally different perspective on things: I understand exactly what our clients want, what their requirements are and what problems they are faced with time and again. I address these points as soon as we acquire a new client and then pass them onto our property managers when we make the transition to regular management. This means our clients can rest assured that they are in good hands and that the employees responsible for them know what they have to pay particular attention to.
Can you give an example of these recurring problems?
Diana Heumüller: They are issues that are familiar in everyday business. When you talk to property owners, the main thing they want from property managers is for them to be proactive. A good property manager anticipates problems and doesn’t just wait to be called about them – because by then, it’s often too late. For example, if investors or surveyors inspect their portfolios once or twice a year, the client must be able to depend on all properties in the portfolio being in top condition. The property manager must carefully prepare for such inspections in advance. The same applies to the familiar scenario of viewing properties with prospective tenants: the worst case for the client is that the property is in a bad state on the day of the viewing or that the property cannot be viewed at all because the responsible property manager has no free capacity and can’t be there. After that, it’s often impossible to get a prospective tenant to come to a new viewing. For this reason, it’s important that property managers fulfil their obligations and always take time, before and after accepting a commission, to ensure they have sufficient capacity and know all they need to know about the property in question.
Den ganzen Artikel lesen Sie in der aktuellen Print-Ausgabe oder im E-Paper.
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