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When the majority of your business is on a 30-day notice arrangement, service and performance become big deals. So it is with Seattle-based Pinnacle Realty Management Co., which today is the third-party manager for some 80,000 apartment units and 9 million sq. ft. of commercial real estate across the United States According to the most recent ranking by the National Multi Housing Council, that ranks Pinnacle as No. 4 on the list of top-50 apartment managers.
"We don't own the amount of units that Insignia owns or Trammell owns or Lincoln owns, so service is a big deal for us because we have to," says CEO John Goodman.
Pinnacle's outspoken president, Stan Harrelson, believes being customer-service driven is a good thing.
"The nature of the business has always been a 30-day world," says Harrelson. "There are two kinds of real estate management companies. There are those that manage predominantly for their own account and they may or may not supplement that with work for third parties. And there are those that are predominantly third-party. We're predominantly third-party. That means that every month hopefully we get a unspoken vote of confidence by the fact that we continue to have this group of clients. Certainly if we weren't doing something right, or if we weren't keeping our role in perspective relative to the client's interest, we'd be out of there. It's a volatile world in terms of the fee-property management business, but it's one that we think we've excelled in really more than anyone else out there, having built the company the size that we have basically on an arms' length third-party basis."
"What it boils down to is choice. Our mission is to be a superior customer-service organization and not withstanding the real estate management venue we think it's all about customer service. We want to be good enough to be chosen, not only by potential clients, but by potential partners, vendors, residents, employees. It's a mindset that goes from top to bottom through our organization," says Harrelson.
And it has led to some interesting clients. "Our customers run the gamut. In general terms, 40% of our customers are institutional - pension funds, insurance companies. We do very little bank REO work. We do a lot...