Amid rapid change, West Los Angeles property management is key

The real estate mantra “location, location, location,” can apply to few places better than West Los Angeles. The beach is a hop, skip and a jump away. UCLA is easy to get to from there. Want to get out of town? The freeways to Santa Monica and San Diego are practically outside everyone’s front door. Want to stay in the neighborhood? Enjoy the Stoner Recreation Center’s water park, lit ball fields, and indoor gymnasium. Looking for a culinary hotspot? Among the many great places in West L.A. to stuff yourself is Sawtelle Boulevard, with offerings from top-of-the-line Japanese to Mexican to French restaurants and bakeries.

Drive down the 405 freeway through West Los Angeles these days, and you’ll notice a boom in construction on both sides responding to this central location’s growing popularity. This key part of the greater L.A. area is undergoing rapid change, with ground being broken on new buildings all the time.

It’s little wonder, as the L.A. Times recently reported, that Los Angeles is the top city for real estate investors in North America. It’s more than the weather, the industry, the parks, and the schools. It’s about the growth, which is best seen in West L.A.

This area of the city saw healthy growth in condo and co-op sales between 2015 and 2016, with a 2-percent increase in volume, and a median sales price increase of 18 percent, reports theMLSblog.com. In addition, with citywide rent averaging around $2,600 per month per apartment, almost everyone living within the greater L.A. area will not settle for crumbling properties, broken fixtures, and dirty hallways.

This makes West Los Angeles property management more important than ever. A growing force of people willing to make sure buildings operate at peak levels for the customers occupying them is necessary.

The job itself presents unique challenges too. Some say being a good property manager cannot be taught, but rather requires an innate ability to keep your cool, stay under control, and keep customers happy with expressions of confidence. In West Los Angeles, the threat of earthquakes keeps property managers on their toes. So does a host of other unpredictable things, like people climbing buildings, drought, and Pokémon-related incidents.

West Los Angeles property managers should undergo thorough training that tackles the many challenges they’ll face in a truly comprehensive way. They should learn not just how to do their own job, but the job of everyone around them, so they can adapt to any sudden challenge more easily.

Property management in a discerning city like Los Angeles is very different than it was just a decade ago. Tenants expect more for their money.

Needs of clients now go beyond the simple day-to-day operation of a building. Managers are now expected to take a hospitality-centric approach, understand financials, and adapt to technological changes in their relationship with clients. Things like smartphone apps, real-time weather and transit screens in lobbies, and innovations in security make the modern job of property management more challenging than ever, and a city like Los Angeles expects its property managers to keep apace.

Comments Off on Amid rapid change, West Los Angeles property management is key

Filed under General

Comments are closed.