2020 was rough (considering changes)

[Jason Malabute]

I had a series of unfortunate events happen to 3 my properties this year:

1) one property, my first tenant ever, moved out because they bought their own house so I saw my first year's cashflow go out the door due to turnover cost (tenant left junk behind)

2)my other property was rented out during the beginning of the pandemic. Everything was going fine until the tenant lost their job and stopped paying. At first the tenant was late on their rent. Our hands were tied because we couldn't charge late fees or evict because the courts were closed. A few months later we were actually able to recover 3 months of rent. Shortly after this the tenant stopped paying again for 2 months until they voluntarily vacated the property so we did not stop the eviction process. However, the recovered rent all went to turnover cost (tenant left their junk behind again). 

3) The third property's basement  was flooded by rain in the beginning of 2020 (this cost me close to thousand dollars). Later this year, this same property was burglarized. I had to pay out of pocket to replace the front door, windows, and bedroom door. Not to mention this property seems to have a work order for a new repair every month.

Property #2 and #3 are managed by the same property manager. I  know that the property manager puts a mark up on repair cost for themselves. I like my PM as people. However, as a businessman I am always skeptical when there is mark up on repairs for the PM to keep because I feel like there is a motivation for the PM to allow work orders to go through. There is no incentive for the PM to contest work orders when they get to keep a percentage of the repair cost charged to owners.

As an entrepreneur, I am allergic to seeing red on the P&L. I am paying this PM a flat fee of $97 per property per month. I was ok paying this because the money I save on repairs and vacancies is suppose to offset the premium fee. I don't know if that was true in 2020 but I am truly not sure if the PM could have done anything differently to make the properties perform better (i.e. they can't predict a burglary or stop rain/flooding in basement). My planned strategy  is to finish the accounting for 2020 and schedule a zoom meeting with the PM in the 2nd week of January. The objective of the meeting will be to see if any these expenses (losses) could have been avoided or did I just have bad luck this year. I also want to establish an understanding with the PM how long does it normally take for a property to be stabilized when it comes to monthly repairs. I want to see if is possible to minimize repairs after the first few months (how many months typically?) moving forward. Did they screen the tenant who stopped paying properly?

Based on how the meeting goes will determine my next course of action for my  PM and if they will be managing my apartment deal once we acquire one. 

How would you handle this situation? Am I being too unreasonable with my expectations?