July 17, 2024
Hiring a real estate partner is a great idea for school districts looking to optimize their resources. However, it’s crucial to work with an organization that has experience working with school districts. Before saying yes to a real estate partner, consider these key tips.
School districts are always seeking innovative ways to improve facilities, optimize resources, and enhance the learning atmosphere for students. Partnering with real estate professionals can be a great way to achieve these goals, especially when your district is facing significant demographic changes or widening resource deficits. But not all real estate companies have the same expertise. It’s important to choose a real estate partner that’s compatible with your organization’s ambitions and unique values.
Before moving forward with a real estate partner, it’s important to have a conversation with potential partners in order to assess their experience with school districts in your area, their capacity to support your needs, and their full understanding of the scope of the district’s goals. Below are four key things to consider before hiring a real estate company to work with your district.
Look for an agency that understands how school districts operate.
There are many different facets of real estate and therefore many different real estate partners with varying levels of expertise. When it comes to hiring the right partner for your district, it’s important to seek out firms who have a clear understanding of how school districts in your area operate.
There are specific needs and considerations a school board will have to keep in mind when making decisions about the district’s real estate property. Choose real estate professionals who understand these particular needs from the start of your relationship to cut down on the time it might take to bring them up to speed.
A qualified real estate partner is one that has an understanding of the education code in California, knows how school board governance works in California, and can comprehend and manage the various stakeholder groups connected to a district such as , parents, district staff, bargaining groups, local government, taxpayers and others.
Consider working with a team rather than an individual, or group of individuals.
When school boards are ready to make big decisions about their district’s building assets, they want to be able to rely on a company that can deploy a team of people that has experience working together and meeting their clients needs in a streamlined manner. This is why DCG recommends working with a team of real estate professionals rather than expecting one individual to manage all the moving parts of your real estate needs.
Specifically, school leaders will want to seek out real estate organizations with internal teams who have a history of working together, not an ad hoc team that is pulled together to pitch to the district. Supporting the real estate needs of school districts can take several years for a single project and relying on a team rather than an individual or an ad hoc team could mean the difference between failure and success.
In our work, we often experience districts who started working with an individual, but quickly realized the scope of their project required more. This is why working with an internal team that can embed themselves into your district as a strategic real estate partner is critical. A team will be able to divide the work amongst several professionals, regularly assess capacity of its team members as a project shifts priorities and needs, and be able to ensure a quality end result that is aligned with a district’s needs.
Ask questions that help you understand a company’s business culture and process.
Most districts have a set of core values, and a mission they keep in mind when making decisions that will affect its stakeholders. Therefore, it’s important to understand a firm’s culture of business and organizational beliefs to understand how they might manage the process of working with you. This includes how they may have engaged with previous external stakeholders and their process of engaging with community members who may be affected by school district projects such as school consolidations and closures.
Ask your potential real estate partners how they work with their internal staff, inquire about their company’s mission, vision, and values, and take time to understand their approach to community engagement and strategy of working with the city and multiple stakeholders. Be sure to have an understanding of their communication narrative, and any previous public relations strategies they’ve executed. It’s not enough to just know real estate, there are nuances.
Finally, take the time to assess a business’s track record.
It can be easy to get distracted by glowing reviews, and well formulated pitches. So much so that you forget to ask for references, or do research on a company’s results.
To do this, we recommend checking in with the company you’d like to work with, and also by taking some time to speak with other school districts and boards they’ve partnered with. During this process, it’s important to be deliberate in asking about engagements that didn’t go well. What went wrong? What might the firm have done differently and why?
Districts want to ensure they are working with bona fide professionals who have significant experience with several other school districts in the last 18-24 months. Additionally, don’t be afraid to contact school districts and ask about their experience of working with a team you’re interested in hiring. Ask about the team’s responsiveness, ability to navigate and solve problems, and their customer service skills.
Remember, school district real estate projects are often long term endeavors. School district leaders won’t just be working with real estate professionals for a few months, but likely several years, be sure this is a team the district can picture working with long term.
DCG Strategies has 20 years of experience working with school districts and their unique needs as well as an exclusive partnership with the California School Boards Association (CSBA). For more information on what makes a good real estate partner, contact us at DCG Strategies for a consultation.
