What a Property Manager Website Needs

Two audiences who want opposite things

Owners are evaluating whether to hire you, comparing you against competitors, and want to know what you charge and what you do for it.

Tenants and residents are already in the relationship, did not choose you, and want to report a problem or pay something with minimal friction.

A site that mixes those addresses neither well, since marketing language reads badly to somebody with a leaking tap and practical instructions do nothing to win a contract.

The structural answer is a clear split at the top of the site, so each audience reaches its own material in one click.

What owners are checking

• What you charge, and how it is structured.
• What is included and what costs extra.
• What you actually do month to month.
• How many properties you manage.
• Your licensing and insurance.
• How you handle money and report on it.

The second is where most complaints in this industry originate, so a clear statement of what falls inside the fee and what is billed separately is both a selling point and a dispute prevention measure.

Say something about fees

The page owners most want and most sites omit.

Publish the structure at minimum: whether you charge a percentage or a flat amount, what the leasing or placement fee is, and what triggers additional charges.

Where you will not publish figures, publish the shape and say what a typical arrangement looks like, which still lets somebody understand the model.

Be explicit about the extras that surprise owners: inspection charges, maintenance coordination markups, statement fees, and what happens at renewal.

An owner who understands the structure before calling is a better prospect, and one who discovers a markup later becomes a complaint.

Licensing belongs on the site

Since it is a regulated activity and most owners do not know that.

In British Columbia, rental and strata management are licensed activities under the real estate services legislation, overseen by the provincial financial services regulator.

Publish your licence details and a link to verify them, which distinguishes you from unlicensed operators and costs nothing.

Explain briefly what the licensing requires, particularly around holding client funds in trust, because that is the reassurance an owner needs and rarely receives.

This is a general description rather than legal advice, and the requirements are worth confirming and stating accurately for your own business.

The tenant side is an operations problem

And treating it as marketing is the common error.

Maintenance requests need a route that works from a phone, at any hour, with space to attach photographs.

Say what counts as an emergency, what number to call for one, and what response time to expect for everything else.

Give payment instructions plainly, including what is accepted and when it is due.

Publish the notice and entry rules, since those generate a large share of disputes and having them stated reduces the arguments.

A tenant who can find these in ten seconds does not telephone your office, which is where the operational saving comes from.

A worked example

A property management firm had one site aimed at owners: services, testimonials, and a contact form.

Their office took a constant volume of tenant calls about maintenance, payment methods, and entry notice, because there was nowhere else to find any of it.

They added a tenant section linked from the top of every page, with a maintenance form accepting photographs, emergency instructions, payment details, and a short page on entry and notice.

Tenant calls fell noticeably within two months, and the maintenance requests that arrived had photographs attached, which reduced unnecessary attendances.

The owner side of the site was untouched and performed as before.

The change had been an operations improvement that happened to live on the website.

Strata is a third audience

Worth separating if you do it, since strata councils are neither owners in the rental sense nor residents.

A council is a committee making a collective decision, frequently comparing several firms formally, and it wants different material: meeting management, financial reporting, how you handle contractors, and what happens between meetings.

Publish what a management agreement covers and what falls outside it, since that is the question every council asks.

Say how you handle document requests, which are a statutory obligation with timelines and a frequent source of friction.

Where you serve both rental and strata, give each its own section rather than describing them together.

Evidence rather than claims

Since every firm in this trade claims responsiveness and none can be distinguished on that basis.

State the concrete things: your maintenance response times, your average vacancy period, how quickly statements are issued, and how many properties you manage.

Name the people who will actually handle the account, since owners are hiring a person rather than a firm.

Publish reviews, and ask for them from both owners and tenants, since a firm with good tenant reviews is demonstrating something an owner genuinely wants.

Numbers and names do the work that adjectives cannot here.

Owners want to see the reporting

A specific piece of evidence worth putting on the site, and almost nobody does.

Show what a monthly statement actually looks like, with the figures replaced, so an owner can see the level of detail they will receive.

Do the same for an inspection report, since the quality of those varies enormously between firms and is impossible to assess from a description.

An owner comparing three managers has no way to distinguish them on reporting quality, and the one who shows a sample has answered a question the others left open.

It also sets the expectation correctly, so a new client is not surprised by what arrives in the first month.

The counter-case

Not every firm needs the full structure.

A manager with a small portfolio, acquired through personal contacts, may need only a credible presence and a maintenance form.

Publishing fees also has a real cost in a competitive market, and a firm competing on service rather than price should think about how much to say.

And a tenant section is only worth building if the routes on it are actually monitored, since an unanswered maintenance form is worse than a phone number.

Split the audiences, publish the fee structure, state your licensing, and make maintenance requests work from a phone.

What to build first

1. A clear split for owners and tenants.
2. Fee structure, including the extras.
3. Licensing details with a verification link.
4. A maintenance form accepting photographs.
5. Emergency instructions and response times.
6. Payment and entry rules for tenants.
7. Named people and concrete figures.

Step four produces the operational saving, since a tenant who can report a problem with a photograph does not telephone and does not require an unnecessary attendance.

Handling the complaints that do arrive is covered in a complaint that arrives by email first.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.