BlueGreen is one of my favorite colors clients. A world-class resort, BlueGreen (NYSE: BXG) operates a little differently than our core of Corporate Real Estate clients. Their idea of tenant satisfaction is installing a 75,000 square-foot pool oasis.

BlueGreen’s specialized industry of leisure and tropical escape required a flexible approach. You see, rigidity and structural confinement are generally seen as antithetical to the resort culture, especially when their slogan is “Colorful Places to Live and Play.” The resort’s unique needs prompted us to rethink our platform’s capabilities.

A client of ours since November 2009, BlueGreen has worked with us to develop a creative property management solution. Here are some of the ways they have optimized the flexibility of the platform:

They have thought outside the sand box in terms of their “Buildings.” In their account, a pool, playground, grill area, or any common area is considered a building, with its own work orders and scheduled PMs. This helps them gain accurate reporting around where the highest demands are. (They are generally wherever the highest concentration of New Jersey vacationers are.)

“Tenants” are essentially room numbers. They have a very specific work order issue list that they use to gain accurate reporting as to the types of issues being reported in their rooms. E.g. “Too much foam in my chocolate hazelccino” or “There is an alligator in my villa.”

Given the size of the resort, the mobile application has become crucial to improving productivity and time management across 54 acres of serene setting. The engineers in the field are able to track, comment, and close work orders without having to return to a computer and spend time closing out the work they have done. More time for the H2O arcade and bar.

You know, I think it’s time for an on-property meeting…

You’re ready to lower operating costs and increase the value of your building. You feel the need, the need for LEED. Now, how do you get buy-in from your team?

LEED certification can be an extremely beneficial tool for a company.  While it can be a hassle to implement, especially in existing buildings, the benefits are plentiful and far-reaching.  Our newest on-demand webinar, LEED EBOM: 101: Essential Tips for the Greening of Existing Buildings, discusses how management should go about gaining LEED certification, and showcases the many positive effects LEED certification has on a building. But just because you recognize the benefits, doesn’t always mean you can realize them.

Here are the steps to build support for LEED Existing Buildings within your organization:

Communicate the Key Selling Points

LEED-EB is good for the environment, leads to tenant retention, reduces operating costs, is a marketing & branding tool, and offers low cost options for achieving sustainable performance.

Address Common Barriers to Implementing LEED

Be Prepared to acknowledge and address common concerns from your team such as:

• Lack of funding- LEED-EB can be done incrementally, is flexible, and offers credits that require little or no capital investment.
• Perception of Extra Expenses- LEED-EB helps solve building problems and reduce operating cost, resulting in saving that mitigate and often exceed the cost of implementing sustainability measures.
• Lack of Human Resources- LEED-EB certification offers flexibility to meet requirements through the efforts of internal staff, outsourcing, or by some combination of both. Gradual implementation means that you can start slowly at any time and kick the procedure into high gear once the time is right for your organization.

Educate Your Team & Increase Understanding of LEED-EB

LEED-EB is a new product from the USGBC. Lack of exposure to these concepts can be a barrier to its adoption. There are numerous resources that provide basic information to help you inform those around you about LEED-EB on the USGBC Web Site: www.usgbc.org.

For more practical information on the proper steps to gaining LEED certification, visit the LEED EBOM: 101 Resource Center. To learn how to manage energy more efficiently and reduce operating costs, check out The Green Spot.

Maybe you’re better than others. Do you know it and how can you show it? Maybe you’ve some catch-up to do in key operational areas. Do you know where and how you should improve?

Get off the bench and get on the benchmarking track! Being a competitive player in CRE demands a comparative analysis of your performance to both that of your peers and best practices in the field. Luckily, we’ve the equipment to start your warm up!

There’s an easy way to measure and benchmark your operational performance. We’ve created a short benchmark survey  that allows for property management professionals to assess their performance across several operational areas and receive immediate feedback based on their responses. Take ten minutes to complete the Operational Assessment Survey and instantly receive a personalized Benchmark Report.

More importantly, you will gain a better understanding of your property’s processes compared to real estate operational best practices. Where do you shine, and where do you need some polishing?

Benchmark the state of your operations for:

1. Tenant Service & Satisfaction
2. Maintenance & Assets
3. Risk Management & Exposure to Liability
4. Online Real Estate Operations

Start the Operations Assessment Survey!

Like the topic? You may also be interested in:

• ON MANAGEMENT: Where Do We Go to Find Best Practices?
• ON MANAGEMENT: 10 Steps to Simple Benchmarking
• Keeping Some Metrics up your Sleeve: 5 Questions you Should Ask
  

Before you can answer the question, “How is my property performing?” you need to ask a few questions. An understanding of property performance is rooted in operational data that is documented, visible, and accessible. However, collecting and managing this data can often feel like searching for the Holy Grail, and wholly fail.

To satisfy and attract investors and tenants, develop easily consumed data around the areas of operations you should have insight into. But first, figure out what those areas are.

Here are the 5 questions about operational metrics you should ask:

Besides the obvious and easy to identify occupancy and retention/renewal numbers, how do you understand underlying indicators such as Tenant satisfaction?

This may encompass accessing and assessing information around your property’s:

• Management team
• Services performed
• Quality of the environment
• Amenities
• History of tenant activities and interactions

How do you assess and understand whether your management team is properly managing operational risk?

Assess your property’s level of:

• Planning and documentation processes for access to information from any location
• Information organization to ensure the ability to defend in the event of a legal matter
• Active certificates of insurance for all tenants and service providers
• Compliance with all life safety requirements (code compliance, inspections, documentation, etc.)
• Reduced insurance costs through a pro-active risk management program

How well is my asset and the equipment being maintained?

Your operational data should reveal that:

• Maintenance is documented
• Access to that information is easily available
• Capital planning is associated with maintenance activities
• The long-term capital effects of deferred maintenance are known
  
• There is NNN tenant compliance with maintenance requirements
• There is a noticeable reduction in energy costs with increased scheduled/preventative maintenance
• The amount of work performed by on-staff personal vs. outsourced service providers is documented
  

How do I receive information on the operational performance of my property?

Ensure that there is:

• Consistency and a standard format
• Frequency of information
• Enough information at a high level to clearly show the data that matters
  

How is one property comparatively performing in key areas?

Analyze how a property is performing in comparison to:

• Other properties in the management portfolio
• Other like-properties using a similar system
• Internally set targets of performance, including ownership target objectives
• Accepted industry standards

To hear an owner and investor’s perspective on the Metrics That Matter, sign up for a free webinar!

Date: Tuesday, October 25th, 12:00pm – 1:00pm EST

Register Now!

If you’re in commercial real estate, whether it’s office, multi-family, retail, or cardboard boxes, you’ve likely witnessed dramatic changes in the industry over the past couple years. The focus on the deal as the investment return driver has given way to a focus on operations and maximizing NOI during a longer hold period.

Institutional, private, and foreign investment ownership are demanding more accountability from management teams. This accountability boils down to a new emphasis on operational analytics. Much as financial performance is measured and quantified, operational performance must be as well. Operating standards, real time visibility, and quantifiable performance reporting are the differentiators for today’s professional management teams.

Are you capturing the right data? Do you have visibility, access, and insight into the data you have? How do you manage and transform your operational information? This data is gold; appropriate reporting and analysis generates actionable insights that enable you to improve risk management, tenant satisfaction, and productivity.

See BEI’s flowchart for tracking and reporting assets:

The best operators are now applying performance metrics to how they operate, and that is their vehicle to taking things to the next level. The game has changed. How should you adjust your thinking and practices to this new reality?

To hear an owner and investor’s perspective on the Metrics That Matter, sign up for a free webinar!

Date: Tuesday, October 25th, 12:00pm – 1:00pm EST

Register Now!

From an Owner & Investor: Metrics That Matter

Quantifying operational performance for CRE’s new reality!

Date: Tuesday, October 25th, 12:00pm – 1:00pm EST

Guest Speaker: Timothy Donahoe, Senior Real Estate Investment Adviser

Peter Drucker’s modern management principle says it all: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” With a greater demand for accountability from management teams comes a new emphasis on quantifiable operational performance metrics.

Join us as senior real estate investment professional, Timothy Donahoe, shares his perspective on identifying key areas for metrics and visibility to mitigate risk and enhance investor returns. Learn more!

In 20 minutes, learn how to understand and assess:

•   The key areas of business you may not be measuring
•   Underlying indicators of operational health
•   Management of operational risk
•   Delivery of property performance information
•   and more insights!

You want to keep tenants in your buildings. At least, if you care about NOI you do. Increased concessions and vacancy loss days come at a cost to your company. And with the ease and ubiquity of social sharing on the internet, happy tenants can equate to free marketing.

So here’s how to ensure that you are being tenant retentive. To optimize your tenant retention strategy, include these general items in your Tenant Retention Plan: (click here for the Checklist and complete Tenant Retention Kit)

A Friendly & Curteous Staff: All property management staff should operate in customer service mode all the time. Attire should be appropriate and staff development training opportunities should be ongoing and include maintenance, janetorial and security staff.

Rapid Response: Set up an online, automated system to respond to all tenant service requests and issues within 1-2 hours. Tenants should be able to track the status of all requests.

Surveys: Every six months, ask tenants to evaluate the property — ask about such matters as cleanliness, maintenance, exterior areas, amenities, noise, parking, and management.

Inspections: Schedule annual inspections to your tenants’ spaces. Make a point to find something small to repair or update during each inspection…especially if a rent increase is imminent.

Building Website: Create a tenant-facing website where tenants can schedule building resources, view building announcements, or access their Tenant Handbook and other building documents.

Preventative Maintenance: Set-up an aggressive, proactive PM Program. The less equipment breaks down, the more satisfied your tenants will be. A web-based property and operations management system can automate this process.

Energy Efficiency: Improve energy efficiency and then make sure to promote these operational savings to your tenants. I.e. “We installed X number of energy efficient lighbulbs in the building.” or “We saved X $ in energy costs this year.”

Tenant Profile: Create a profile of each tenant that inlcudes include a history of maintenance and service activities, especially those actions that might have been extended as a courtesy beyond the scope of the lease.

Learn more about the top factors that keep tenants happy and renewing leases in a complimentary webinar: Full House- Strategies for Tenant Retention. Presented Tuesday, September 13th at 12 EST by tenant representation specialist Patrick Braswell and operations veteran Brett Lazar, this Webinar delivers practical information on tenant retention best practices.

Personally, I prefer to have full visibility into my endeavors rather than marching blindly through life.  Learning facts or information that you don’t want to know may not always be pleasant, but at least it gives you the opportunity to get ahead of the problem and address it head on before it becomes a crisis.

In our daily lives, we cannot always do this without help.  In most jobs, there are mountains of data that not only need to be collected, but also processed.   We often rely on software to collect this data, but that alone is sometimes not enough.  In order to see the anomalies and abnormalities within the data, it is important that the software is smart and that it has logic and best practices built into it to provide the clarity we need.  There has been a lot written recently about making sense of data and how to process it and I encourage you to take full advantage of those resources.  For example, a recent Whitepaper on managing energy data overload : http://be.buildingengines.com/WhitepaperDemystifyingEnergyDataManagement.html.

Sometimes, the logic and best practices we need are not readily available to us through the software we use and the vendors we work with.  I encourage you to reach out to your software providers and help them understand what is important to you.  What are the critical nuggets of information that you need to better run your business?  Your software provider may need help learning from you what is important, and in turn, they can help you by building tools to help you get that information.  Quid pro Quo.

As thanksgiving approaches, I plan to take this approach of needing full visibility and transparency all the way down to the plate of food that I will be eating.  To accomplish this, I will be slaughtering my own turkey this year.  I figure that if I cannot stomach chopping a turkeys head off and gutting it, how can I fully understand what it takes to put that scrumptious bird on my plate this November 25^th.  As I mentioned before, full disclosure is not always pretty… real, yes, but not pretty.

I do not expect, however, that the turkey will elect for visibility.  In all likelihood, I expect my turkey to be drunk:

http://theclicker.todayshow.com/_news/2010/11/11/5448774-martha-stewart-gets-turkeys-drunk-before-killing-them?gt1=43001

So, where does that leave you?  Are you a man…or a turkey?

I just read that the U.S. office market recovery has begun:

“…that the third quarter the U.S. office market posted positive net absorption for the second consecutive quarter — 5 million square feet absorbed in the second quarter and 7 million square feet in third quarter.” [U.S. Office Market Enters Early Recovery as Absorption, Demand Point Up, Vacancy Turns Corner].

While these are small numbers, they are welcome moisture to a desiccated market.

In the same digital breath, however, Co-Star’s Group’s 2010 Third Quarter Office Review said that “the national office market won’t begin seeing rental rate increases for another three or four quarters or net operating income increases for another four to six quarters.  That means rents won’t start increasing until well into 2011 and net operating income increases will have to wait until 2012.

In the lexicon of Bill Belichick – “that is bulletin board material”.

I think that the experts have it backwards.  Surely, office rental rates will remain flat for a while, but it will be far longer than a few quarters.   Office buildings in 79 metropolitan areas lost 1.9 million square feet of occupied space in the third quarter or 2010, pushing the national office vacancy rate to 17.5%, the highest level since 1993, or so says Anton Troianovski, of the Wall Street Journal in his October 5^th, 2010 article – Signs of Recovery for the Office Market. While economists agree that office vacancies will not reach their record 1992 high of nearly 19%, the recovery will certainly be long and rental rates will remain depressed.  I contend that those rental rates will remain well below their high for another two to three years as corporate recovery fills existing shadow space; 2009 and 2010 leases run their fully renegotiated course; employment begins, or struggles, to recover, and the market absorbs what is a massive inventory of newly constructed space.  Other factors will contribute to the length of recovery, such as changes in workplace design and the growth in popularity of outsourcing and virtual officing.    So, even with the recovery, things look bad for near-term rental rate recovery.

The same is not true for Net Operating Incomes.

The financial downdraft created by the current economy is beginning to change office management attitudes and practices.  The advent of long-term negative growth has shifted management focus back to asset quality and condition as well as towards renewed and better capital planning.  The commercial property management market has become far more comfortable with the “Cloud” and new technologies it provides have allowed progressive real estate managers to see more, to measure more; to manage more successfully, and marshal assets and resources more economically – more intelligently than ever before.   The Cloud makes managers look smarter – be smarter.   Improved visibility into property condition and asset-related activities provides management with enhanced decision-making power and greater revenue producing opportunities than ever before – yielding ever-increasing NOI.

The “Moore’s Law” of real estate management is that a real estate manager’s awareness and use of technology is growing exponentially – and from my limited perch, I’ve seen it double year-to-year.   The more technology a manager uses, the more visibility that manager achieves.  Visibility translates into efficiency which begets dollars per square foot.  Better managed buildings with professional systems and automated services keep tenants happier (retention) and attract new tenants to available space.   While property management dollars are not necessarily in the same order of magnitude as transactional dollars, they are dollars nonetheless.  A dollar saved is another dollar competing for sunlight on the bottom line.

So, I am encouraged by the new focus on management through technology.  It is a healthy change for what had become an old and staid market space. Simply said – quarter-to-quarter, clicks are driving bricks and mortar.