What made you choose your property manager???

Question

What are all the things that made you choose current your property manager?

Account Closed · Answer

The very first thing I pay attention to is whether or not the PM answers there phone when I want to interview them.

The 2nd and third things I look for is whether or not the person I am speaking with appears to have half a brain and then I listen to the flaws for their price structure. The old say, "the devil is in the details" applies when a PM tells you their pricing and leaves out all the details and fails to mention their prices for renewing leases, renting units, charges for dealing with contractors, etc.

I had a PM in Las Vegas for 28 single-family homes. The PM has several phone numbers and it would sometimes take more than a week of telephone calls before I could speak with a human voice.

Account Closed · Answer

When I purchased my first apartment building (28 units) I made a promise to myself that I would never allow a tenant to get me emotionally upset. Then, you need to create tenant policies that you adhere to. Example. We give our tenants until 5 pm on the 5th of the month to pay their rent without a late charge. We pick up the rents at 5 pm and when the tenant's payment is not in the box they pay a late charge even if they pay us 1 hour later. Then, when there rent is not paid on the 5th we give the tenant a 3-Day Notice To Pay Or Quit the following morning. After the three days we file for an eviction with an attorney. No exceptions and then the tenant owes us their rent, late charge and attorney fees. No exceptions.

The problem with a property management company is every PM I ever met does not jump on collecting rents and filing to get the tenants out as quick as they should and the tenants get too far behind. I own a plumbing business, work for many landlords and most landlords hate their tenants. We set up the way we manage our tenant so we actually love dealing with tenants. Sure! We are currently evicting an ignorant and arrogant tenant who actually pays his rent (late), but as I said; we won't allow tenants to get us upset or emotional. We immediately evict a tenant for looking at us cross-eyed.

The bad thing is your PM probably doesn't do as good a job as you can. Our PM in Las Vegas made some serious mistakes in regards to dealing with tenants like when one of our tenant's husband was dying in the hospital from COVID and my PM evicted my tenant because I wanted to sell the house. I told the tenant she could stay and my property management company told me they would drop my account if I let her stay. A few days later, the husband passed away and the tenant moved, regardless of my wanting to sell the house.

Account Closed · Answer

There is an old saying, "Too many hands spoil ruin the soup" or something like that.  We own several apartments, homes in 4 states and while Las Vegas was the only place I had a property manager I would never hire a PM again. I don't really blame the property management company for the damage to the properties because as the owner of the properties I can't expect my property manager to drive by every property every 30 to 60 days, look inside and then manage all the issues e.g. tenants literally running a dog kennel inside my house, tenants smashing hole in walls and literally smashing doors in half, vertically, tenants painting all the walls in the house a brown color that was so dark the walls were almost black. There is nothing better than being hands-on and having full control of everything including your money.

When I sold my homes in Las Vegas I found out that my property management company owners and employees never met most of my tenants during the two or more years they managed my properties. That means, nobody inspected inside my homes and my wife and I personally inspect every apartment unit every six months and no less than once every year and we get tough with our tenants when they are slobs and when we're finished inspecting many apartments our tenants hire a cleaning service to clean their apartments and then we inspect the pigs apartments every 3 months until they learn to keep them clean, or we evict them, We want our apartments clean so we don't have roach and rodent problems and the #1 thing we watch for is food in open containers in the open, in cabinets and especially in the base cabinets. We also get tough on tenants who don't keep their bathtub wall free from that black crappy mold, mildew or whatever people call it. The pink mold on bathtubs is called Peniccilium. It is quote toxic and it sort of looks like pink soap.

Joe S. · Answer

The first property manager that I ever used was because I had a property out of the state. The second time I used one was because I had a property out of the area that needed someone to evict deadbeat tenants. Now I am placing all my rentals that come on the market with a property manager. The reason is we have grown large enough that it makes sense to focus on acquiring properties and fixing them instead of chasing tenants for payments.

Julian Colvard · Answer

Account Closed Thank you for the detailed response! How do you wish your PM handled charges with contractors vs how they actually did?

Joe S. · Answer

Good post Jack. What if somebody doesn’t want to be their own PM for ever? I can’t remember, but a four day vacation in the last number of years. I think drama bothers me more than it affects other people. I’m tired of chasing people for payments. I try to be nice to people and they take advantage of me. People call their job golden handcuffs, but Personally managing all your properties can become that as well IMO. I agree that nobody cares for your properties like you do, but you’re not getting any younger so what’s your plan for the future?

What made you choose your property manager???

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