By: Alisha Robbins, COO
We’re incredibly proud to announce that our Charlotte office has been awarded the Bronze medal in the Charlotte Observer’s “Charlotte’s Best” competition for property management. In a major metropolitan market, we were recognized alongside—and only narrowly behind—two very large commercial real estate companies with significantly more resources and market presence.
This award belongs to our customers, and we want to genuinely thank everyone who voted for us and trusted us with their properties. That trust, especially during some of the most challenging years our industry has ever faced, means everything to us.
But to really appreciate what this recognition represents, it’s worth understanding both the scale of this achievement and the journey that got us here.
Charlotte’s Best: A Program with Real Weight
The Charlotte Observer’s “Charlotte’s Best” program is one of the most respected local recognition platforms in our region. It’s not an internal industry award or a pay-to-play recognition—it’s determined by actual votes from the community, from people who use these services and businesses every day.
In a metro area the size of Charlotte, with hundreds of property management companies competing for attention, earning any recognition is meaningful. To place third, beaten only by two major commercial real estate firms with far larger portfolios and brand recognition, represents something we didn’t take for granted for a second.
This was essentially our last “COVID year”—a period that was still incredibly tough, still filled with uncertainty, and still demanding the kind of rapid adaptation that had defined the previous few years. The rental market remained volatile, regulations were still settling, and both landlords and tenants were navigating a landscape that looked nothing like the pre-2020 world.
Why We Won: Responding to Seismic Shifts
If I had to identify the single most important factor in earning this recognition, it would be this: we got really good, really fast, at identifying and responding to the seismic shifts happening in housing.
The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t just disrupt property management—it fundamentally changed the rental market. Eviction moratoriums, emergency housing regulations, massive shifts in tenant expectations, financial pressures on property owners, remote work changing where and how people wanted to live—these weren’t temporary blips. They were permanent changes that required permanent adaptations.
What set us apart was our ability to:
Identify problems quickly. We didn’t wait for industry consensus or for problems to become crises. We stayed ahead of the curve, recognizing emerging issues before they became unmanageable.
Communicate clearly with all stakeholders. Property management sits at the intersection of multiple competing interests—owners, tenants, vendors, and regulators. During the pandemic, communication became absolutely critical. We made sure everyone understood what was happening, why it was happening, and what we were doing about it. That transparency built trust, even when the news wasn’t always what people wanted to hear.
Act decisively in our customers’ best interests. We didn’t hesitate. When we identified a problem or an opportunity, we moved. Sometimes that meant difficult decisions. Sometimes it meant investing in new systems or changing processes that had worked fine in the old world but wouldn’t cut it in the new one.
The Cost of Adaptation
I want to be honest about something: navigating those years was brutal. We lost a fair amount of staff during that period. In fact, most of the people we hired during COVID are no longer with the company. That’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s the reality of what happens when you’re simultaneously dealing with unprecedented external challenges while trying to build and maintain a team in an incredibly volatile environment.
What made the difference—what allowed us to not just survive but ultimately thrive—was having the right anchor in place.
Catherine Pitney, (read more about her amazing journey to property management industry leader) our Charlotte office manager, was that anchor. Her commitment, her strength, and her remarkable personality held that office together through some of the most turbulent times any of us have experienced professionally. While others might have folded under that pressure, Catherine leaned in. She steadied the ship, maintained standards, and somehow managed to keep both customers and team members confident that we’d get through it.
Looking Forward: Data, Strategy, and Continuous Improvement
The last couple of years have seen us finalize a lot of exciting changes, all in response to the massive shifts in the modern rental market. We’re not the same company we were in 2019, and that’s a good thing.
One of our major strategic focuses has been on data—both for internal management and strategy setting, and crucially, for delivering what our customers want most. We’re not guessing anymore about what works and what doesn’t. We’re measuring, analyzing, and adjusting constantly.
This commitment to data-driven decision-making has allowed us to:
We’re extremely excited about our ability to deliver a product that improves dramatically year after year from this point forward. The foundation we built during those chaotic COVID years, as painful as it sometimes was, positioned us to take advantage of the tools and insights now available to forward-thinking property management companies.
What This Award Really Means
The Bronze medal from Charlotte’s Best isn’t just a nice plaque for the office wall. It’s validation that our customers noticed what we were doing. They noticed that we were responsive when things were falling apart. They noticed that we communicated clearly when clarity was hard to come by. They noticed that we adapted when adaptation was the only path forward.
And they voted for us because of it.
To everyone who supported us with their vote, who trusted us with their properties during the hardest years, and who stuck with us through all the changes and challenges—thank you. Your trust in our service is something we respect deeply and never take for granted.
We’re honored to be recognized as one of Charlotte’s Best, and we’re committed to proving every single day that you made the right choice.
Here’s to what comes next. In our next two installments, we will cover the customer-focused changes that we made in response to the post-2020 housing landscape, and also the data-focused adjustments that have proven so instrumental in our model and results.
Please, if you are a subscriber to the Charlotte Observer, we would deeply appreciate a review on their site because of the effort we put into building a win-win model that promises major profits for owners using our resident satisfaction model and strategy. Visit the Page
Also See: Inc Magazine’s Inc 5000 Names MoveZen as 2024 Industry Leader
MoveZen Property Management awarded prestigious CCA Award
