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Centralization in Multifamily: The Hard Skills Aren't the Hard Part │ Brittany Gonzalez, Senior Manager of Centralized Services at RangeWater

Summary

Brittany Gonzalez has built centralized services teams twice, at two different organizations. Brittany is Senior Manager of Centralized Services at RangeWater Residential. Before RangeWater, she spent over six years at Cardinal Group, starting as an assistant community manager in student housing before becoming one of the earliest hires on Cardinal's centralized services team. Jacob Kosior and Brittany get into what it actually looks like to go from on-site burnout to building a centralized program across 75,000+ units. They talk about the moment she realized the community manager role wasn't for her, what changed when she moved into centralized services, the skills she looks for when hiring for centralized teams, and much more.

A lot of people coming into these roles on centralized teams already have the hard skills. They already know how to do delinquency, file evictions, lease an apartment. Now, the soft skills are really, really important.

In This Episode

Takeaways

  • The community manager track isn't the only path forward. Brittany loved being an assistant community manager but burned out in the CM role. Rather than leaving the industry, she found centralized services and built a career that didn't exist a few years ago.
  • The shift from on-site to centralized isn't just a location change, it's a different way of working. On a centralized team, you're managing multiple communities at once and you have to take control of your own time. The ability to manage your time effectively is what Brittany says separates those who thrive.
  • Technology adoption works best when the team meets the people who built it. That direct access, rather than top-down rollouts, is something she credits as crucial to making change management stick.
  • The hard skills aren't the hard part. Everyone coming into centralized services tends to know how to file evictions, process invoices, and collect rent. What actually defines success in these roles is time management, flexibility, and the ability to adapt.