1st American Management Company Inc. celebrated its 10-year anniversary of Accredited Management Organization (AMO®) certification with a company cookout. Family and other businesses were invited to celebrate with 1st American’s employees and play cornhole, throw axes courtesy of Lucky Hatchet out of Michigan City, paint, and tie-dye shirts. Partygoers beat the heat with cool beverages and dined on assorted picnic fare.
“We are celebrating 10 years of being an AMO®, which stands for Accredited Management Organization, and we launched a new logo recently as well,” said Chief Financial Officer and Vice President Gina Manns.
Why is this such a big deal? AMO® status shows that 1st American is a quality real estate company.
“It's a big process to go through to be an AMO®,” said Chief Operating Officer and President Michael Bottos. “You must have an IREM Certified Property Manager (CPM®) in an executive management position. We used to only have our owner who was a CPM®, and now have four CPMs on staff. With only 560 AMOs in the country, we are in the elite group of property management companies.”
“As a property management company, we manage homeowners’ associations, condo associations, as well as commercial real estate. We manage strip malls, medical complexes, and commercial property owners’ associations,” said Manns. “On the residential side, we collect assessments from homeowners, and on the commercial side, we collect rents from tenants and then we pay bills for all the associations and commercial properties.”
Events like these bring together building management, office workers, maintenance staff and clients to meet each other and better understand the needs of the community as a whole.
“The years of experience and knowledge we have within this office speaks volumes to me because we have several staff members who have been with the company for over 20 years. The amount they've learned over the years and can teach others is very important in our business,” Manns said.
The party also brought together people who would have never met under other circumstances. “Our employees, their families, board members, business owners, and key industry partners are all here,” said Bottos. “As people with whom we do business on a regular basis, we invited them to come out and celebrate with us, but they would normally never meet our families or meet the other people in our office. Now they finally get a chance to see the person they hear on the other end of the phone when they call into the office.”
The activities were paired with a raffle that all attendees were able to participate in.
“We’re excited to bring everyone into such an open atmosphere,” Bottos said. “We're giving everybody the chance to win a prize with one free ticket. We have three prizes we're giving away: a round of golf for four at Aberdeen, a Kong cooler that's branded 1st American, and four White Sox tickets. You can also buy additional tickets to try and win any of those items and the proceeds from the ticket sales are donated to Lakeshore PAWS.”
1st American Management Company’s AMO® certification demonstrates their employees' focus on quality service. The certification calls for celebration and a due break from the office grind.
To learn more about 1st American Management Company Inc. visit their website https://1stpropertymanagers.com/.