Budget reviews for multifamily property management can drown you in numbers. Ron Kutas, CEO of OneWall Communities, has a single question that cuts through the noise faster than any spreadsheet: “Who is the top vendor that we paid this month and why?”
The answer, he says, “should quickly align with what’s happening at the property.” When it doesn’t, you have found a problem worth chasing.
Kutas offers a memorable example. On a call with a third-party manager running a 450-unit complex, he asked his question, and the top vendor was the HVAC contractor. Doing the math, it looked like nearly 100 units had failed in a single month, roughly a quarter of the property.
“Nobody on their side thought to be like, wow, this is ridiculous, what’s going on here?” The real cause turned out to be a three-day heat spike. Residents complained that apartments sat at 80 degrees when it was 105 outside, and instead of explaining that no unit keeps up with weather like that, the team “kept calling a third-party vendor to come in and really do nothing, but every one of those calls is $180 service charge.”
That is the value of asking the right question. OneWall Communities builds its budget process around exactly this kind of scrutiny. The team sets per-unit benchmarks by region, compares them against the current manager’s budget, then works line by line with the asset management group and the on-site team to understand what is actually being spent and why. Vendors are kept honest and shopped across the portfolio every year.
For owners of Class B multifamily assets, that discipline is the quiet engine behind value-add returns, and it comes from a vertically integrated operator that spent years owning workforce housing before managing it for others.
Property management is complex, and the best solutions come from shared incentives. Whether you’re exploring new approaches or facing specific challenges, we’re here to talk.
Visit us at onewallcommunities.com or call us at (646) 596-7068.