How to run a management company search
The full process end to end: deciding whether to rebid, building a scope, who to invite, how to keep proposals comparable, how to evaluate, and how to document the decision for your minutes.
Decide what you are actually solving
Before anything else, separate two questions that Boards habitually merge. What went wrong with the current arrangement, and what does the next company need to be good at. They frequently have different answers, and the second one determines who you should be talking to.
Build a scope, not a wish list
A scope lists every service you need and asks each bidder to declare it included, extra with a price, or not offered. Without that structure you receive four documents describing four different jobs, and no amount of reading reconciles them.
Invite deliberately
Three to six proposals is the useful range. Fewer gives you no spread; more produces evaluation fatigue and wastes companies' time, which they remember. Screen on service area, size-band experience, licensing where required, and the specific capability your forward priorities need.
Protect the comparison
Insist on a common format, a complete ancillary fee schedule, the named manager with their portfolio load, and a stated financial delivery date. Anything a bidder will not put in writing at proposal stage will not improve after signing.
Evaluate on total cost, not headline
Project three years including escalator compounding, onboarding, and ancillary fees at your actual volumes. The ranking that produces is frequently not the ranking the monthly rate implies.
Document the decision
Record the method, the quorum, who voted, and the basis. A six-figure fiduciary decision documented with a show of hands is a governance problem waiting to be raised.
General information for Board members, not legal advice. State law and your governing documents control.
Statutory deadlines, contract terms worth knowing about, and what we learn from proposals. No sales email, and we do not sell the list.
Start with what you already know.
You know your unit count. You know what your current management does well and what it does not. That is enough to begin.
Free for Boards. No calls until you ask.