Wrap Up from Building Owners & Managers Conference 2013

Last Friday, Property Managers in the Chicagoland area gathered at the Marriott Oak Brook to participate in Illinois Real Estate Journals’ Building Owners and Managers Conference. The half-day event schedule started with a networking breakfast followed by two expert panels with an intermission between them for additional networking and booth visits.

During the second panel, “In the Trenches: What Keeps Property Managers Up at Night?“ experts including Bob Best of Jones Lang LaSalle, Geoffrey Kassleman of Op2mize LLC, Scott Bernstein from the National Retrofitting Group and Realogic’s own PresidentDale Vanderlaan analyzed the ways that their work affects a property manager’s biggest concerns.

Panel Discussion

Moderator Melissa Podolsky (of Podolsky|Circle) established a theme of risk management early. In her first round of questions, she allowed each panelist to present how their businesses reduce Property Manager’s risk while minimizing their costs. Both Bob Best and Scott Bernstein spoke about Energy efficiency consumption while Geoff Kassleman offered his thoughts on property managers’ readiness in the case of natural (or man-made) disasters.

When asked “What keeps property managers up at night?” Dale Vanderlaan answered by relating some identified trends in the budgeting process. Trends, he said, that indicated property managers are being asked to assemble increasingly longer term budgets with more detail in a shorter amount of time than they were as recently as 2010. His answer to these increased budgeting demands are met by the efficiencies that can be introduced when using REALOGIC BUDGET. The web-based software allows easy multi-user access to a single budget from anywhere with an internet connection, which in turn allows a budget team to scale

Realogic was also highly visible at the event as exhibitors (staffed by Marketing team members Miles Baltrusaitis and Amanda Gorman as well as Lease Administration team member Amanda Grantham).