Top Ten Real Estate Performance Metrics for your Property Scorecard

Today we are in an enviable position with the technology resources available to us that allow collection and almost instantaneous data manipulation and presentation for management.  We are now in a position of tracking metrics for our property scorecard that a few short years ago were simply not possible.  Unfortunately this massive information collection capacity leads to other problems such as information overload and developing a true understanding of what the metrics are telling us. Ensuring that real estate managers are developing real skill to unleash the potential that metrics and a property scorecard gives them is still an issue, not only using the scorecard to track performance but to use the KPI's to forecast business health and prescribe solutions for problems diagnosed.

So, without any further ado, here are the top ten real estate metrics for your property scorecard:

1. Net Advertising Expense - this measures the total advertising expense less fees from vendors and this metric should always be negative i.e vendor fees are greater than the expense.  Good agents tend to spend more on advertising and earn more back than poorer performing agents.2. Salary Cost per Employee - this will track your team cost and highlight poor return on investment teams for attention3. Operating Surplus - typically measured as the surplus funds after all capital and operating expenses that are available for return to the owner4. Operating Surplus per Principal - this is a good indicator of the relative performance of one branch or team against another5. Sales Revenue per Sales Person - tracks the relative success of a sales person6. Sales per Sales Person - tracks the work rate of a sales agent 7. Average Fee per Sale - helpful for tracking the direction of your business in terms of the market sector you are targeting, ideally you want to see an upward trend in this metric8. Management Fees per Property Manager - a metric to track and compare letting and /or property managers against each other9. Tenancies Managed per Property Manager - indicates the work rate of each property manager10. Average Management fees per Tenancy - again helpful for tracking property management direction and you will want to see an upward trend in this metric

Looking at real estate metrics beyond these tends to be an exercise that can quickly descend into nit-picking.  The majority of management information that can be used to really make a difference for managers in making effective and optimal decisions is contained within these 10 metrics.

Real estate managers and owners should make sure that they truly understand what these metrics are measuring while individual team members should be trained and counseled to understand what is being measured and why.  If the metric is being linked to bonus and commission payments then educating staff on the use of the property scorecard will help to get them to take ownership of their responsibility for their own performance and the contribution they must make for team and business performance.