Most vacancy is self-inflicted, operationally.
One thing property management teaches you fast:
Vacancy usually isn’t a leasing problem.
It’s an operations problem.
Let me ask you something, when a tenant gives notice, what actually happens next?
Is there a clear, enforced sequence…
or does it depend on someone remembering to send an email, schedule an inspection, follow up with a vendor, then circle back again?
That’s exactly where we were when we took over our own portfolio.
Turns were slow.
Scopes lagged.
Listings went live late.
And everything felt heavier than it should have.
So we stopped trying to “manage harder” and rebuilt the process.
We mapped the entire turn from notice to market:
Inspection scheduled automatically.
Scope created the same day.
Vendors triggered without chasing.
Listings live before the unit is even fully ready.
No heroics.
No tribal knowledge.
Just a system that defines what “done” looks like and enforces it.
Here’s the interesting part, once that was in place, vacancy days dropped almost as a side effect. Leasing didn’t get better because leasing changed. It got better because everything upstream did.
So I’m curious, where do things typically slow down for you during a turn?
If you’re managing units yourself, or running a PM operation that feels harder than it should, this is usually very fixable with the right operating system.
