Cedar Management Group Blog
Many of you may have asked yourselves what the initials after your community managers name stand for. Those initials represent the professional designations that we have all earned through training and experience. In this industry we are hired by our clients to provide guidance and make recommendations that will help our communities meet their goals and address any problems that may arise along the way. In an industry that requires us to have an understanding of so many different fields (maintenance, accounting, contract law, collections, landscaping requirements, pool health codes, etc.) we must be constantly pushing ourselves to learn so that we can pass along our knowledge to our clients. To show our commitment to excellence in our industry we send our staff through classes offered by Community Associations Institute (CAI) to help develop their level of knowledge and gain experience from others in the industry.
At a time where the real estate market has slowed many real estate professionals have turned to property management as a way to supplement their income while sales are slow. While property management is in the real estate field, homeowner’s association management is much different and takes a certain set of skills and knowledge to be successful. To ensure that the person or company you have put in place to management your community s qualified you should ensure that they have received the appropriate training to manage communities. If you have hired a management company to manage your community and they have not invested in their people to ensure they have the appropriate training I would question their management as to why. An untrained community manager can cause serious problems for the community that can be felt for years after they have left, misguiding a community into unnecessary improvements that deplete reserve funding, or overlooking routine maintenance items are just examples of what can happen when someone who is not properly trained tries to guide a community.
We require that all of our property managers begin working on their CMCA designation, Certified Manager of Community Associations, immediately upon starting at Cedar Management. The CMCA designation provides the foundation for knowledge and lets our clients know that the person we have assigned to your community has the knowledge and ability to help you succeed. The next step for our community managers is to obtain their AMS designation, Association Management Specialist. This designation requires further training and at least two years experience working with communities with an endorsement from a Board member. Obtaining this designation shows commitment to the industry and a high level of community management experience. We currently have five management specialists on staff at Cedar Management Group.
To continue to hold these designations we must complete continuing education courses and webinars throughout the year that teach us about changes in the industry and newly developed programs for communities. Although this industry requires a full time effort be given to each and every client we have the pleasure of working with we are committed to learning new things every day that will help our company provide a better service to all of our clients. We invested a great deal of time and money into educating our staff and we hope that investment translates into success for each community that has given us an opportunity to work with them.
