Hiring a commercial property manager is a significant decision. The right firm protects your investment, handles tenant relationships professionally, tracks every lease obligation, and gives you clear visibility into how your property performs. The wrong firm does some of these things inconsistently — and the gaps, which are often invisible at first, show up over time as missed lease deadlines, opaque financial reporting, inflated contractor costs, and tenant relationships that deteriorate quietly.
The challenge is that every property management firm presents well in a first meeting. The questions below are designed to get past the presentation and reveal the operational reality — who will actually manage your property, how they handle the things that go wrong, and what the engagement actually costs you. They are written specifically for commercial property owners in Greater Vancouver evaluating commercial property management firms.
This article is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult qualified legal counsel about your specific management agreement and situation. Read our full Editorial Disclaimer.
Before You Meet: What to Prepare
Before your first meeting with any management firm, prepare a clear summary of your property: address, size, number of tenants, lease types (gross, net, NNN), expiry dates, any known issues or deferred maintenance, and what has frustrated you about the current management situation if you are switching managers. The quality of a firm's questions back to you — and how quickly they demonstrate they understand your specific property type and situation — tells you as much as their answers to your questions.
Bring a copy of one of your leases if you are willing to share it, or at minimum know the basic terms. A manager who can speak intelligently about your lease structure and what it means operationally is different from one who offers generic answers regardless of what you tell them.
The 12 Questions That Reveal the Most
1. Who will actually manage my property — and what is their current portfolio size?
This is the most important question to ask, and the one most often glossed over in initial meetings. Property management firms frequently have senior people present in business development conversations and then hand day-to-day management to junior staff. Ask directly: what is the name and experience level of the person who will be my primary contact? How many properties are currently in their portfolio?
As a rough operational rule of thumb, a commercial property manager handling 30 to 40 properties cannot give the same attention as one handling 10 to 15. If each property generates several meaningful actions per month — tenant interactions, vendor coordination, financial reporting, lease tracking — a manager with a large portfolio is processing hundreds of items monthly before any unexpected issues arise. Something will eventually be missed.
Ask what happens when that person goes on vacation or leaves the firm. Is there a defined backup with knowledge of your property, or does a stranger take the files?
2. Do you mark up contractor invoices?
Ask this directly, in those words, early in the conversation. A firm that passes contractor costs through at cost will say so without hesitation. A firm that marks up invoices — adding an undisclosed percentage to every repair and maintenance bill before passing it to the owner — will hedge, use language about "administrative fees," or say something about "managing the vendor relationship."
The impact of contractor markups is not trivial. On a commercial property with $30,000 to $50,000 in annual maintenance and repair costs, a 10% to 15% markup represents $3,000 to $7,500 per year charged to you without appearing as a line item in any fee proposal. Over a five-year management relationship, this dwarfs the visible management fee difference between firms. The contractor-cost question is covered in more depth in our guide to commercial property management fees.
The follow-up question: "Can I see the actual contractor invoices on my monthly statement, or only the amount billed to my account?" The answer tells you whether transparency on costs is real or performative.
3. Can you show me a sample monthly owner statement?
Ask to see an actual monthly report, with another client's identifying information redacted. The quality and structure of financial reporting varies enormously between firms, and seeing a real example is far more informative than a description of "comprehensive reporting."
What a good commercial property management monthly report should include: an owner statement showing all income and expenses for the period with net distribution clearly stated; a rent roll showing each tenant's current rent, lease status, lease expiry date, and any outstanding balance; an aged receivables report showing arrears by tenant; a bank reconciliation confirming trust account balance; and for CAM properties, a year-to-date operating cost tracking against the recovery budget. If a sample report doesn't contain these elements, ask how the missing information is communicated to owners.
4. What is included in your base management fee — and what is billed separately?
Get this in writing before you sign anything. The base management fee percentage is rarely the complete picture. Common items that reputable firms include in the base fee — but that some firms charge separately — include routine tenant communication, rent collection, CAM reconciliation, monthly reporting, and standard vendor coordination.
Items that are legitimately charged separately at most firms include leasing commissions for new tenants, lease renewal fees, capital project management fees, and extraordinary legal or compliance costs. Ask specifically about each of these so you can compare proposals on a total-cost basis rather than just the headline percentage.
Ask whether management fees are recoverable from tenants under your existing leases — if you have triple-net leases with operating cost recovery provisions, the management fee may be reimbursed by tenants as part of CAM, making the net cost to you significantly lower than the gross percentage suggests. A manager who can explain this clearly, and who will administer the CAM recovery properly, is demonstrating the kind of lease fluency you want.
5. How do you track lease obligations — renewal options, rent steps, and CAM deadlines?
Lease administration failures are the most expensive and least visible form of management negligence. Ask specifically: what system or process do you use to track renewal option windows, rent escalation dates, and CAM reconciliation deadlines? How far in advance are renewal options flagged? Who is responsible for sending renewal notices — the manager, the owner, or counsel?
Ask whether they maintain lease abstracts — structured summaries of each lease's key provisions — and whether you can see an example. A manager who says "we track everything in the lease file" without describing a systematic calendar or tracking tool is describing a reactive process, not a proactive one.
Missed renewal option deadlines are particularly costly in commercial leasing. Most BC commercial leases require the tenant to give written notice of intent to renew within a specific window — often six to nine months before expiry. If that window closes without notice, the option typically expires. The tenant then either vacates or the landlord is left negotiating a new lease from a weaker position. A single missed deadline can cost more than years of management fees. This is part of the broader framework covered in our guide to the BC Commercial Tenancy Act.
6. What is your response time commitment for tenant inquiries and emergencies?
Ask for specific numbers, not general assurances. "We're very responsive" means nothing. A commitment to same-day response for standard tenant inquiries and two-hour response for urgent operational issues is a standard you can hold the firm to.
Ask how after-hours emergencies are handled: is there a staffed phone line or a personal mobile number? What trades relationships does the firm have for off-hours response in Greater Vancouver? A manager who has to call a general contractor hotline at 2am because a pipe has burst in a Richmond retail unit is providing a different service than one with established emergency trade relationships across the region.
Ask what the tenant communication documentation practice is — are interactions logged? If a tenant reports a maintenance issue verbally three months before their lease renewal and later claims the issue was ignored, is there a record that it was addressed?
7. How do you handle CAM reconciliation?
If you own a multi-tenant commercial property with operating cost recovery provisions, CAM reconciliation is one of the most financially significant things your manager does every year. Ask directly: is annual CAM reconciliation included in your management fee, or is it a separate charge? When in the calendar year is it performed? What does the reconciliation package look like?
A manager who is vague about the CAM reconciliation process, or who treats it as an occasional task rather than a scheduled annual obligation, is a manager who may be leaving recoverable operating costs uncollected — or who may be creating tenant disputes by reconciling inaccurately.
Ask whether they have experience with CAM reconciliations under BC commercial leases specifically, where operating cost provisions vary considerably from lease to lease. The ability to allocate shared costs correctly under different lease structures in the same building — one tenant with a 30% share, another with a 20% share, operating under different definitions of recoverable costs — requires genuine lease administration competence.
8. What does your management agreement say about termination?
The management agreement is the contract you are signing. Read it carefully before you sign, and ask specifically about the termination provisions.
What is the notice period required to terminate? Thirty days is reasonable. Ninety days is long. Anything beyond 90 days should prompt a conversation about why.
Does the agreement contain an automatic renewal clause? If so, what is the deadline for providing non-renewal notice, and what happens if you miss it? Some agreements automatically extend for a full year if notice is not given 60 days before the anniversary date — meaning a decision to switch can be delayed by nearly a year simply by missing a calendar date.
Is there an early termination fee? If you are committing to a one-year or longer initial term, understand what it costs to exit early if the relationship does not work out.
A manager who expects to earn retention through the quality of their service — rather than contractually enforce it through restrictive terms — will have a management agreement that reflects this. Unreasonably long notice periods and punitive exit terms are a signal about how much confidence the firm has in their own performance.
9. Are you licensed under BC's Real Estate Services Act — and is your brokerage in good standing with the BCFSA?
In British Columbia, property management is a regulated activity under the Real Estate Services Act. Firms and individuals providing property management services for compensation must be licensed by the BC Financial Services Authority (BCFSA). This is not a question about professionalism in the abstract — it is a legal requirement, and working with an unlicensed operator exposes you to financial and legal risk.
Confirm that the firm holds a valid trading services or rental property management licence, that the managing broker is appropriately licensed, and that the firm is in good standing. You can verify licence status directly on the BCFSA's public registry through the Find a Real Estate Professional search at bcfsa.ca.
This question also reveals something about how the firm handles regulatory and compliance matters generally. A firm that is current on its licensing, maintains proper trust accounts under BCFSA requirements, and operates with the financial discipline that licensed firms are required to maintain is a different operation from one treating these requirements casually.
10. How do you handle a situation where a tenant disputes a CAM charge or a maintenance obligation?
Tenant disputes are inevitable in commercial property management. How they are handled — both in terms of the immediate resolution and the documentation — determines whether disputes remain manageable or escalate into lease disputes or litigation.
Ask for a specific example of a disputed CAM charge or maintenance obligation they have handled recently, and how they approached it. A good answer describes a process: reviewing the lease language, communicating professionally with the tenant, documenting the position in writing, and escalating to counsel at the appropriate point. A vague answer about "handling it professionally" tells you nothing about the actual process. The same documentation discipline applies to more serious situations, including tenant rent arrears.
Ask whether they maintain a documentation practice for all tenant interactions, including informal ones. The owner's legal position in any future dispute depends entirely on what was said, when, and what was documented.
11. What is your local vendor network in the specific municipalities where my property is located?
Greater Vancouver is not a single market. A property in Surrey's industrial corridor operates differently from a mixed-use retail building in Kitsilano or a commercial strata unit in Burnaby's Brentwood area. Vendor relationships that work well in one submarket may not transfer to another.
Ask specifically about the firm's vendor relationships in the municipality where your property is located: who are their preferred HVAC contractors, their emergency plumbers, their commercial electricians, their roofing contractors? How do they vet and manage vendor performance? What is their process for getting competitive quotes on significant work?
A manager who can name specific trusted vendors for your area, and who can explain how those relationships are maintained and evaluated, is demonstrating operational depth. A manager who describes a generic vendor management process without local specifics may be operating at a regional remove from the actual work.
12. Can you provide references from owners whose properties are similar to mine?
Ask for two or three references from current or recent clients whose properties are similar in type, size, and location to yours. A manager who manages a single-tenant warehouse well may have a different operational approach than one whose portfolio is primarily retail or office. A reference from an owner with a similar property gives you the most relevant feedback.
When you call references, the most useful questions are: how long have you worked with this firm, what has gone wrong and how was it handled, would you recommend them to a friend with a commercial property, and is there anything you wish you had known before engaging them?
What the Answers Tell You
The pattern across these questions is more important than any single answer. A firm that is specific, direct, and transparent — who can describe their processes in operational terms rather than marketing language — is demonstrating the same qualities they will bring to managing your property. A firm that hedges on contractor markups, is vague about who manages the portfolio, cannot show a sample report, or presents a management agreement with restrictive exit terms is showing you something real about how the relationship will work.
The goal of this conversation is not to find reasons to reject candidates. It is to find the firm that answers these questions most directly and whose answers most clearly match what you need from a management relationship for your specific property.
How RC-PM Approaches These Questions
RC-PM is a boutique commercial property management firm serving landlords across Greater Vancouver. We manage a deliberately limited portfolio so that every property receives active, senior-level attention. Our answers to each of these questions are straightforward: contractor costs pass through at cost; management fees are structured on a percentage of gross rent with a clear scope of what is included; lease obligations are tracked systematically with a forward calendar maintained for every property; and every property is managed by a senior team member with direct owner access.
If you are evaluating management options for a retail, office, industrial, or commercial strata property in Greater Vancouver, book a consultation and we'd welcome the opportunity to answer these questions for your specific situation.
Have a Question Not Covered Here?
Have a question about evaluating commercial property managers in Greater Vancouver that this guide didn't answer? Browse our FAQ for more details, or contact RC-PM directly — we're happy to walk through your specific evaluation criteria and what to look for in your property type and area.
This article is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult qualified legal counsel about your specific management agreement and situation. Read our full Editorial Disclaimer.
