Third-Party Property Management in REDA

When you manage a building for someone else, you are running an owner's property on their behalf under an agreement — collecting rent, handling maintenance, recovering shared costs, and reporting back. This article is the concept anchor for the whole Property Management section: it explains what that arrangement actually is in REDA, names the record that represents a management engagement, shows the two things that get stamped onto the building when the agreement closes, and points you to the day-to-day articles for each task. No prior REDA experience is assumed — every term is defined as we reach it. By the end you'll be able to tell a management deal apart from a sale or a lease, know where the fee terms live, and know which article to open next.

What "third-party property management" means in REDA

In third-party management, you — the manager — operate a building that someone else owns, under a written agreement that sets your fees and responsibilities. REDA models this as a real relationship between two different parties, not as a single checkbox on a property. The owner remains the owner; you are engaged to run the building and to bill on the owner's behalf. Everything in this section flows from that one idea: owner and manager are distinct, and the agreement between them is a record you can point to.

Three records carry the model. The management deal is where the engagement is negotiated and closed. The agreement of record is the ticket that holds the fee terms. And the Property — the building or unit — ends up pointing at both, so anyone looking at the building can see who manages it and under what agreement. We'll take them in that order.

The Property Management Opportunity (the management deal)

REDA calls a deal an Opportunity — its single "deal" record. The same object represents a sale, a lease, an acquisition, a loan, and a management engagement; the record type tells them apart. A management engagement is an Opportunity of record type Property Management, one of the deal types REDA ships. (A lease, by contrast, is an Opportunity of record type Leasing — same object, different type.)

Like every deal, a management deal advances through a fixed set of Stages, shown as a Path — the progress bar across the top of the record. The Property Management path has exactly five stages, in this order:

Prospecting → Contract Out → Under Contract → Closed Won → Closed Lost

You rarely drag this Path by hand. The deal's stage is driven for you by the PMA ticket described next: sending the contract moves the deal to Contract Out, and signing it moves the deal to Under Contract. The full mechanics live in Property Management Agreements.

The PMA ticket: the agreement of record

A ticket in REDA is a short, tracked checklist for one step in a record's life — it has its own status Path and, when you work it, it moves the parent deal forward. The management agreement is recorded as a PMA (Property Management Agreement) ticket, and it moves through the statuses New, In Process, Contract Sent, Contract Signed, Closed, and Cancelled.

The single most important fact about the PMA ticket is where the numbers live:

Not every deal may carry a PMA ticket. REDA restricts it to a management deal or to a completed sale (a buyer who then engages you to manage what they just bought). If you attach one anywhere else, REDA blocks the save with:

The step-by-step for building and closing a PMA ticket — filling the fee blocks, sending, signing, and closing — is Property Management Agreements. This article only names the ticket and its role.

What gets stamped on the Property at close

When the PMA ticket reaches Closed, REDA writes the management relationship onto the building's Property record so it's visible at a glance on the Details tab:

Sitting alongside these is the Owner Account — the account that owns the building. This is the distinction that makes third-party management real: the Owner Account and the PM Company/Entity are two separate fields holding two separate accounts. The whole point of managing on someone's behalf is that the owner and the manager differ.

REDA guards the owner relationship. If you set an ownership start date without naming the owner, or the reverse, you'll see:

The cast: owner, PM client, manager, tenant, vendor

A handful of roles appear again and again across the Property Management section. Naming them once here makes every later article easier to read:

A managed building still runs the ordinary leasing lifecycle for each unit, so tenants, leases, and their charges behave exactly as they do on any property — see From Application to Move-In. What management adds is the owner dimension on top.

What changes once a property is under management

Day-to-day, a managed property runs through the same machines as any other: leases raise their invoices, service requests become work orders, and repairs get billed. Management layers an owner-accounting dimension over all of it — management fees on the collected rent, expense reconciliation to recover shared building costs from tenants (with the owner absorbing vacancy), and monthly reporting. The task-level detail lives in Managing a Property Under a PM Agreement; the money mechanics live in the owner-accounting articles linked below. This article only orients you — it doesn't walk those tasks.

Worked example: Meridian Properties and Continental Holdings

Here is the running example the whole section reuses. Meridian Properties — the firm you work for — is engaged to manage a building owned by Continental Holdings. The engagement plays out like this:

The field-by-field walkthrough of the PMA ticket is Property Management Agreements; the day-to-day is Managing a Property Under a PM Agreement.

A Property Management deal record — the owner is Continental Holdings. The highlights panel shows Account Name, Stage (here Prospecting, the first of the five stages) and Record Type Property Management; the Details tab below carries the PM Account and Property Details.

The managed property Continental Plaza - 88 Harbour Road after its agreement was reached — the PM Info section carries the PM Opportunity ("Continental Plaza - 88 Harbour Road [ PM ]"), PM Stage (Under Contract), and PM Agreement (ticket T-0000000219). PM Company/Entity is blank here — it stamps only once a PM company/entity is set on the deal.

The New Ticket dialog with the PMA (Property Management Agreement) record type: the form that opens once you pick PMA, carrying the PM Company/Entity, Agreement dates, and Placement Fees for the management agreement.

Key concepts at a glance

Where to go next

1. Property Management Agreements — build and close the PMA ticket, the fee blocks in full.
2. Managing a Property Under a PM Agreement — the day-to-day on a managed building.
3. Expense Reconciliation: Concepts — recovering shared building costs from tenants.
4. Monthly Snapshots & Occupancy Analytics — auditing billing and reading occupancy numbers.
5. Key Concepts — "the Opportunity is the deal", record types, and the Path.
6. Understanding Tickets — the engine behind the PMA and every lifecycle step.

Frequently asked questions