Sylvia Alvarado

I've been in property management for 15 years, and I've been a property manager for multifamily sites for about 10 years now. After deciding I needed to figure out what I was doing with my life, I went to school and got my degree in business administration. I started my career with property management and fell in love with it - I've never strayed from this path. I'm currently with South Oxford Management, which is the longest standing company I've been with throughout my career. I was with them for about three and a half to four years, then left and just returned, and I've been back with them for a year now. I handle the daily operations of the property, oversee office staff and maintenance staff, make sure that the property is running as it should, ensure units are walked and done, make sure residents are happy and their requests are being taken care of, and I focus on revenue management and increasing occupancy while making sure ownership is happy with performance based on myself and my team. In the last few years of my career, I've been placed on properties that were struggling, and I come in and do my best to put together good teams, add structure, and turn things around. The property I'm at now, I'm very proud of because when I came in, it was at 36% occupied - it was hit by the hurricane that happened a year ago, and we had downed units and went through renovations. Now we're at 85% occupied. My team and I have really come a long way on this property. Every day is something different, and that's what I love about it. There's no handbook in property management - you're learning every day, figuring things out every day. I think that's what makes a good leader, being willing to learn and being open to failure, because that's how you learn. Property management really pushes you to think outside the box, to be open to different perspectives, and to be open to failure.