Cory Leschel Career Background
What is your biggest career achievement?
- My biggest achievement is my career with Pegasus Residential as a whole. I started as a Leasing Consultant, green to the industry in 2018. Since then, I have earned six promotions and have supported 14 lease-up assets across five states to achieve stabilized status through strategic onsite operational efforts. In my most recent role as General Manager, I trained six sales/leasing associates across three properties on the Pegasus sales process, bringing the average Ellis shop score to 95% in the respective market. In this role, I led a dynamic sales team through stabilization efforts at a stalled 358-unit lease-up in a saturated submarket, bringing occupancy from 86% to 95% in 60 days. I also led five associates to internal promotions at the onsite level. Following the successful disposition of these assets, I transitioned to the Support Services department as a Marketing Project Manager. In my current role, I manage the processes around our strategic partnerships to enhance property performance while reducing advertising costs for our clients. Recently, I oversaw the transition of our 150 property portfolio to a new digital advertising platform as well as the transition of assets, copy, and template curation to a new website provider.
Given your past experiences, what event/ project or moment would you revisit and how would you go about it differently based on your current frame of mind?
- Reflecting on my career, I realize the importance of "raising your hand" when you need support. Throughout the initial stages of my role as a Property Manager, I focused on reducing the strain of the onsite teams I led, while minimizing any pain points that I would push up to my Regional Manager. My mindset centered around problem solving but at times to a fault. In the time since, I've learned that this can hurt the operational flow of an asset and the team you are leading. As I grew as a Property Manager, and now as a Marketing Project Manager, I've shifted my mindset around problem-solving. In my day-to-day, I aim to embody a mindset of "managing up". Now, when I reach out to my leader for support, I provide a potential solution while expressing my pain point. By doing so, problem-solving becomes a collaborative effort and enhances my problem-solving skills. Operating with a solution-oriented frame of mind is imperative in property management. If you lean into "raising your hand" and "managing up" when needed, you can position yourself to tackle complex problem-solving in a dynamic, and generally, more productive way.
From your perspective, what is the industry lacking to support the modern renter and how do you plan to help supply that need?
- At its core, multifamily is a people-centric industry. Residents and prospects expect clear and personalized communication in real-time. As an industry, we often fall short here. Onsite teams are often responsible for manually compiling data and reporting for owners, investors, and senior leadership. They are also responsible for driving that data day-to-day at the property, with the objective of increasing rent growth, occupancy, and NOI. What if we could remove or reduce the burden of reporting from our onsite teams? In my opinion, giving back those hours to our teams is invaluable- especially in the midst of a changing job market in which many properties are often understaffed. An initiative in my department is to support operations by reducing this strain. We make a concerted effort to focus on leveraging platforms and partnerships that provide streamlined and consistent data that is accurate and easily accessible. By prioritizing automation and lifting this strain off of our onsite teams, we are able to empower them to take back that time to drive the data instead of collecting it. Our teams are able to focus more on customer service and resident experience, while still meeting the reporting needs of our clients.