12 Questions to Ask a Property Management Company

Before hiring a site care company, ask who will run your site, what the owner will see each month, how upkeep and leasing choices get approved, what the fees exclude. How the handoff will work. These 12 questions turn a sales presentation into a working comparison.

Ask each candidate the same questions. Request a sample owner report, an case of a completed work order, a transition checklist. A written fee bid. The answer should spot the person in charge and the record you'll receive, not just describe the company's intentions.

1. Which Properties Are Most Similar to Mine?

Ask about asset type, size, geography, use, leasing profile, staffing, and current state. “We manage everything” is not enough. The team should explain which parts of your site resemble its current work and which will need a other plan.

Commercial owners should hear about lease oversight, paybacks, tenant duties, critical dates, and vendor contracts. Multifamily owners should hear about unit turns, leasing conversion, resident service, new terms, and delinquency. Mixed-group owners should hear how both playbooks roll into one owner view.

2. Who Owns My Account and Daily Operations?

Clarify the bond lead, site team, books contact, upkeep coordinator, leasing owner, and handoff path. Ask how many sites or units each key person supports and what happens during absence or turnover.

3. What Will I Receive Every Month?

Request a redacted report and a sample meeting agenda. Ask. When the books close, who reviews them, how variances are explained. How daily work appears beside the money statements. Compare the answer with the monthly site care report owner checklist.

4. How Does a Maintenance Request Move From Intake to Closeout?

Have the company walk through an urgent, a routine repair, and a cash project. The explanation should cover triage, sign-off power, vendor or technician task, tenant access, status updates, invoice review, quality control. Finish proof.

5. How Do You Select and Control Vendors?

Ask about plan check, bidding thresholds, conflicts, markups, preferred-vendor plans, repeat contracts, after-hours response. How poor work is corrected. If the company gives in-house upkeep, ask for labor rates, dispatch rules. The circumstances in which an outside specialist is used.

6. How Do You Manage Leasing, Renewals, and Collections?

The answer should spot the work and conversion measures reviewed, who can approve terms or concessions, how upcoming expirations are handled. How delinquency is escalated. Commercial and multifamily workflows should differ where the underlying leases and tenant choices differ.

7. What Are All of the Fees and Exclusions?

Ask for a written plan covering care, leasing, new terms, onboarding, upkeep labor, vendor markup, checks, project oversight, notices, technology, postage, after-hours work. Termination. Use the site care fee comparison guide to test the total scope rather than one percentage.

8. How Will You Transition the Property?

Ask for the transfer checklist before signing. It should address funds, deposits, ledgers, leases, keys, utilities, vendors, open work, leasing pipeline, tenant clear updates. First-month audit. A transition start date without a dependency map is a warning sign. Review the full care-company switching sequence.

9. Which Systems Will I Use, and What Can I See?

Technology should support the step, not replace it. Ask what appears in the owner portal, how current the data is, where files live, how sign-offs are recorded, what residents or tenants use. How the team works. When a system or integration fails.

10. How Do You Surface Risk and Exceptions?

Ask how the team handles urgent events, incidents, plan claims, checks, major lease issues, repeated upkeep, data errors. Deadlines. A strong answer separates fast response, factual records, owner clear updates. Vetted legal or skilled review. When needed.

11. May I Speak With Owners Who Have Similar Properties?

References are most useful when the site and owners context are comparable. Ask what the company does well, where it needed to improve, how it handles mistakes, whether reports is timely. Whether the owner can see duty for open issues.

12. What Will You Do in the First 30, 60, and 90 Days?

The plan should be clear enough to show check, check, audit, clear updates, running top tasks. Reports milestones. It should also explain what depends on the outgoing team or owner and how missing facts will be handled.

How to Score the Answers

Use the broader site care company choice framework to score asset fit, running control, proof, clear updates, transition readiness. Fee clarity. Give more weight to the risks that matter most for your site instead of averaging each category.

Coastline Equity's commercial and multifamily site care services explain the running cadence and how scope and fees are logged in a written bid.

Put the Questions Against Your Property

The fastest way to improve the interview is to use your actual rent roll, lease profile, open upkeep, recent owner report. Current care concerns as the test case.

Related reading

• How to Choose a Site Care Company
• Coastline Equity Site Care Services