Managing a portfolio of homes, vehicles, vessels, and valuable collections is a key responsibility for family offices, but comes along with many challenges. Ensuring that properties and assets are well-maintained, organized, and ready for use is a lot of work and can often feel overwhelming.
Whether the portfolio includes just a few properties or spans multiple residences, yachts, aircraft, and art collections, the complexity of managing these assets demands constant attention.
Some family offices have the luxury of property teams that are responsible for the maintenance and oversight of one or more properties. These team members are trusted to use their own methods and systems to get the job done right. Without property management software, this often involves spreadsheets, fragmented systems, or manual processes, leading to inefficiencies, oversights, and human error.
In this article, we explore the top challenges family offices face in managing properties and how Eleven Property, developed by Eleven Systems, is designed to address these issues.
Top Challenges in Property Management for Family Offices
1. Ensuring that properties are well maintained
According to a study by Deloitte, 78% of family offices identified managing multiple property types and locations as a major challenge, and in a survey by EY, 67% of family office executives admitted that their property management was reactive, addressing problems only after they occurred, rather than through proactive, organized systems that ensured readiness at all times.
The problem lies in that family offices are typically managing a range of properties and related assets across different geographic regions, including residential estates, commercial properties, vacation homes, yachts, and vehicles. Each property or asset requires its own set of tasks, maintenance, and management.
The Family Office Club, cited that over 50% of property-related issues stem from poor communication and a lack of accountability among team members. Without a coordinated system for staff to submit and track everything from routine maintenance, issues and property readiness, tasks can become overwhelming, especially when managed across multiple platforms.
Chad Pike, founder of Eleven Systems and former co-head of real estate at Blackstone, found himself struggling to manage his growing personal portfolio, which included over 45 personal properties, 49 commercial properties and 22 development properties. Furthermore Pike accumulated assets spread across these properties including more than 400 vehicles and vessels, roughly 2,000 pieces of art and other valuable personal items
Despite having a team of 15 property managers and 79 staff members, his properties were often not up to his standards, and the systems in place didn’t allow for efficient management across such a broad range of assets.
2. Preparation for owner and guest arrivals
Another common issue faced by family offices is ensuring that properties are always ready for use. From Wi-Fi outages to maintenance failures, arriving at a property only to find things out of order can ruin a stay. Proactively managing everything from technology to basic property amenities is crucial to providing a seamless experience for principals and their families.
As Chad Pike recalls, property readiness was a frequent issue. “When you and your guests arrive at a property, you want everything to be perfect,” he says. Whether it was something major such as a malfunctioning hot tub or something minor like a missing login credentials for the AppleTV, each issue creates unnecessary frustration and stress for Chad and his family.
Regardless of the team size, the competency or the amount of training, Chad was unfortunately continuing to find issues at his properties. The solution, he decided, was to create checklists for the team to follow that set the standard for exactly what needed to be done to ensure readiness. His mission was to:
- Leverage Checklists to eliminate human error and oversight and to ensure that his properties were checked with consistency each time.
- Utilize checklists to document standards so that with ever changing staff each team member knows exactly what needs to be done.
- Codify troubleshooting tips, photos and videos provide the tools that staff need to fix issues when found
- Improve accountability with the team, showing who checked the property and who the standout players are on the team.
- Boost visibility into what issues exist before arrival to eliminate surprises and to manage expectations
- Leverage an Issues tracking tool to promote team collaboration for resolving issues and tracking them to completion
Checklists ended up cutting down the number of staff that Chad needed by 32%. This is due to the efficiency and clarity that the checklist tool provided. Now, before arriving to a property, Chad is confident that his properties will be proactively checked to his level of standard and that if issues exist his team will be on it.
3. Making it easy to find important property information and details
According to a report by Family Office Exchange (FOX), 62% of family offices struggle to keep up with asset tracking and documentation, resulting in missed maintenance deadlines, insurance lapses, and incomplete reporting of net worth. Additionally, not having important property details available at your fingertips can lead to wasted time and frustration.
The popcorn is popped and the family is on the couch, ready for movie night. If only you could remember the password for the AppleTV account. After 10 minutes of wasted time looking for the password, you send a text to your property manager. Hopefully he’ll come through again, but you and your family will have to wait. How frustrating.
What about gate codes, alarm codes, safe codes or WiFi passwords? Keeping track of all of this can be daunting. That on top of operating manuals for the home, maintenance reminders and details about each asset results in a lot to track. As Chad began to organize his assets he realized that he had over 20,000 across all of his properties. What if you had a place to store all of these important details so that they were easy to recall when needed?
Family offices often rely on a mix of spreadsheets, different data stores, paper records and files. Worse yet many items are out of sight, out of mind. Without a centralized solution, family offices are left to track assets with incomplete information, making it difficult to ensure that the needed records and documentation are documented and available.
“By organizing everything in one place—checklists, issue tracking, asset management we were able to dramatically improve accountability and reduce surprises,” says John Featherman, Managing Director of Assets and Development at Eleven Systems. The goal of implementing the Eleven Family Office property management system was to:
- Inventory property valuables for insurance purposes and include them in your consolidated balance sheet.
- Securely store and manage codes and passwords so they are easy to find for things like streaming media accounts, wifi passwords and alarm codes
- Manage property maintenance details, floor plans, operating manuals and reminders, to improve the upkeep and maintenance of the property.
- Gain peace of mind that Insurance documentation with all coverage details are readily accessible, especially when needed most.
“A digital property binder is what every homeowner should have to get themselves organized and to ensure that the property is well maintained”, claims Featherman. “Not to mention we’ve decreased the number of WTF emails because Chad now has all of the information that he needs, always available at his fingertips.
4. Improving property security and visibility
Security is paramount for UHNW individuals. According to a study by Knight Frank, safety and security are ranked among the top concerns for UHNW individuals especially with regard to their properties. These individuals often own multiple homes, making it difficult to ensure each location is properly monitored, safe and secure without the help of advanced technology.
The growing trend of targeted attacks on UHNW individuals further emphasizes the need for robust, 24/7 security monitoring systems, including the integration of modern technology like security, surveillance and access control systems. Advanced security not only safeguards physical assets but also protects the well-being of family members and guests who frequent these residences.
Research suggests that investing in advanced security technology can reduce the risks of intrusion and theft by up to 50%, according to security industry studies. For UHNW principals, such measures are invaluable in protecting both their assets and their peace of mind.
Chad wanted to be able to:
- View cameras and clips to see who is or has been at the property
- Review door access logs to see who is entering his properties and the ability to manage codes for individuals
- Receive security system alerts to his phone as events happen, rather than relying on slow responding police or security contractors.
- Have full monitoring capabilities in his pocket to provide peace of mind..
“It was important to support the existing hardware at the properties, including cameras, burglar systems and door access keypads” said Austin Lowery, Managing Director of Eleven Systems. The solution was to add a property monitoring dashboard that sits on top of these security systems, making it easy to monitor and manage all properties from a simple, unified interface.
Conclusion
Chad Pike faced significant frustrations managing his properties, despite having a team to help. Critical tasks were often missed, and essential details like Wi-Fi passwords or maintenance schedules frequently fell through the cracks due to the lack of a centralized platform for issue tracking and task management.
In response, Chad founded Eleven Systems and the Eleven Family Office platform, with the first task of streamlining property management with a real-time platform that integrates checklists, task tracking, asset management, and security.
Eleven Property not only resolved Chad’s challenges but became an important component of the Eleven Family Office platform, which can be used for your family and family office, simplifying operations, improving team accountability, and ensuring properties are always ready and secure.
To learn more about how Eleven Property and the Eleven Family Office platform can help you revolutionize property management for your family office, visit Eleven Systems today.
