Maria Stanton

Miller Valentine

By Leah Etling on Sep 4, 2012 in People

Need a refresher on your best practices for property management? Refocus on these two simple tips from Maria Stanton, Director of Operations for Property Management at Miller Valentine: Get your team on the same page, and focus together on your customers.

They are lessons she learned as a young leasing manager for a high rise apartment community in Cleveland, and have been the foundation for a successful career in the property management industry.

In her first multifamily experience, the then 21-year-old Stanton managed a staff of 40 people, and many of the employees were older than her. To make the community successful, she focused on building a strong team and working together cohesively to serve every resident – with 1,100 units, no easy task.

“Understanding how your people can make or break the success of a community was one of the biggest lessons I learned. Getting that whole team together to accomplish the common goal was really important. You have to get everyone on the same page, understand their responsibilities and buy into the whole picture,” Stanton told us.

What’s in the picture? Remembering that the customer comes first.

“We sometimes get caught up in so many parts of our business that we can forget about the customer. It’s so important to maintain that understanding of what the customer wants.” Her early experiences in real estate helped hone that skill – while going to college, she simultaneously earned her real estate license and sold homes for a developer.

After landing at the REIT-owned Cleveland high rise, Stanton became a community manager,  Sales and Marketing director, then Regional Operations manager before moving to her current role as Miller Valentine’s Director of Operations (she has been with the company for over six years).

Today, she oversees more than 270 employees responsible for Miller Valentine’s 11,000 unit property management portfolio, with communities in nine states. The units are diverse, ranging from traditional multifamily to senior and military housing, as well as single family homes. Miller Valentine also offers brokerage, construction, residential and development services.

Stanton is also extremely active as an industry leader and advocate — she is the current president of the Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Apartment Association, a delegate for the Ohio Apartment Association, and serves on the affordable housing and education curriculum task forces of the National Apartment Association.

One of her focuses on the local and national level is to improve educational opportunities, making them affordable and readily available to property management staff teams.  Stanton teaches Fair Housing curriculum for the NAA’s Certified Apartment Manager course, one of area where she would like to see training growth.

“For a leasing professional, community manager, service technician, understanding the whole area of Fair Housing and what we can and should be saying to our customers in the field is important. There are always opportunities to better educate our folks in the field. That’s something I’m a strong advocate of,” Stanton told us.