We sat down with Barb Schuba, CFO/COO, and Mitch Robertson, Director of Property Management, to talk about how Suntide’s ability to be flexible plays a key role in the company’s property management strategy.
Why is flexibility an important part of Suntide’s business model?
Barb: Suntide offers full service commercial real estate, which is unique for a small firm. From a property management standpoint, being small allows us to be nimble. If a client comes to us and wants us to manage a particular property, we can do most everything in house, whether it’s maintenance, leasing, construction, interior design – it’s all under one roof.
For example, if a tenant has a project that is needed, we already have the as-built design in place. We don’t need to hire an interior design firm to come out and create specs for that building. We have immediate access to those plans and can get a bid in less than a week.
Mitch: Another example is maintenance. Because our maintenance team already has been out to the space, they know where the breakers are, they know which hours certain tenants don’t like to be disturbed, etc. Because we are so hands on, we can be incredibly efficient in our response.
Barb: There’s an old saying, ‘time kills deals.’ We have professionals on staff so that we can be nimble when our clients call. We can walk across the hallway, right into a person’s office, and get information that would take other firms a week. This allows us to provide a different level of personal attention and customer service.
Suntide provides maintenance technicians who are intimately familiar with your property. This allows us to be efficient in our response times.
What is an example of flexibility among property assignments?
Mitch: Suntide manages a variety of properties: office, retail, medical, and industrial. And they vary in size – from a 5,000 square foot retail strip center to 300,000 square foot office complexes. So there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution from property to property. We evaluate each property from 40,000-foot view down to day-to-day operations, and property building staffing.
Barb: For example, industrial buildings don’t need as much attention as a retail strip. There just isn’t as much foot traffic. Industrial buildings need accounting and the occasional repair. You don’t need to have as many property manager visits as you would with office or retail.
Barb: For example, industrial buildings don’t need as much attention as a retail strip. There just isn’t as much foot traffic. Industrial buildings need accounting and the occasional repair. You don’t need to have as many property manager visits as you would with office or retail.
In that instance, Suntide can save clients’ money by working closely with the tenants on-site. You can befriend the tenant who can alert us to repairs or vendor oversight. This sort of flexibility reduces costs back to the owner.
Mitch: Or in the case of retail, the anchors often have a preferred vendor and set contracts already in place. For example, a grocery store might have a preferred vendor who maintains their parking lot. We can work with preferred vendors. Suntide doesn’t necessarily have preferred vendors. If you already have vendors in place, we will keep them. We look at each situation and find the best vendor for the given job.
Barb: We feel that this provides less change for the tenants and makes for an easier transition. Some property management companies make you use their preferred vendors. We don’t do that. We don’t come in and wipe the slate clean. If something is working well for you, we’ll keep them.
Suntide evaluates each property including its day-to-day operations, staffing, and budget, and provides a customized approach.
Being Flexible with Budget
Mitch: We currently have a property management assignment which I think is a good example of Suntide’s ability to be flexible. It’s a historic property in Minneapolis: Minnesota Council of Churches, 60,000 square feet, all office.
Barb: First of all, this client came to us, and they didn’t have a large budget. The majority of their tenants are nonprofits, and they didn’t have a lot of capital. We were able to create a custom package for them.
They run a tight ship and couldn’t afford a full-time property manager. But we were able to provide them with a maintenance technician on-site. This would help them with efficiencies during the day and remove some of the contracted services they had – such as a day porter, HVAC, lawn care, miscellaneous light repair. That was the first step in saving them money.
Secondly, the building is historic and has lots of old, outdated systems that use a lot of energy. It has these two very large boilers. These two oversized boilers are producing way too much energy. They will never, ever use the energy produced by these large boilers.
One initiative we will look into is we want to reduce their operating costs by switching them to a more energy-efficient system. Given our expertise on these types of upgrades, we would expect the utility drop to be around 50-60%, and they could see an ROI in as little as 2 years. That is our goal. But in order to do that, one of the suggestions we would make is to reach out to various Minnesota and Minneapolis grants to find the necessary capital.
Mitch: We don’t typically do assignments like this, but the tenants are non-profits serving the community, and we were able to provide a unique service because of that. Suntide was a good complement for them because we work with many nonprofits, which often do require some amount of flexibility.
How do you determine which services to customize?
Barb: A lot of property management firms will only do all or nothing. Suntide wants to find a solution that will work for you. We have clients who say, ‘I don’t need accounting service. I already have a CPA.’ If you only need property management, we can do that. If you only need accounting, we can do that.
Mitch: The first step is meeting with the property owner and understanding their goals. Do they want to reduce costs? Are they having trouble getting a property fully occupied? From there we can create a custom package that tackles those goals.
Barb: Being full service doesn’t mean being full priced. It’s about being able to customize a package with a selection of services in house. Being flexible is about the ability to fine tune a package to the customer’s needs. I think investors will be surprised when they realize that they can get the same — if not better — customer service by switching to small, locally owned company that knows the Twin Cities market, has the staff, and has the resources. And they don’t have to be paying big firm prices.
For more information about Suntide property management, call 651-603-0321 or contact
Barb Schuba
CFO/COO
[email protected]
Mitch Robertson
Director of Property Management
[email protected]