Telling Tenants You're the Property Manager

[Matthew Kirkwold]

Hello everyone,

I've heard that some people will tell their tenants they are the property manager so that when a dispute comes up they can say the "owner" is the "bad guy" and not them. On the other side of the coin, like I read in The Book on Managing Rental Properties, you can also make the lease the "bad guy" and be firm on enforcing the lease of the property you own. I'm wondering what you think is the better approach especially considering the fact that your name will be listed as the owner on the county/city GIS website that the tenants could easily see. I feel like it would be a bad situation if the tenant actually looks up the listed owner of the property, then confronts you and you are caught in a lie.

Secondly, considering that the owner and owner address are both public info and easily accessible on the city GIS site, is there any way to keep your personal address private? I have a feeling there isn't if you are wanting the property in your name to avoid setting up an LLC and get residential financing on the property instead of commercial. I agree its not good to have your personal address easily accessible to tenants but are there any other options?

Thanks!!

[Jim K.]

Originally posted by @Matthew Kirkwold:

Hello everyone,

I've heard that some people will tell their tenants they are the property manager so that when a dispute comes up they can say the "owner" is the "bad guy" and not them. On the other side of the coin, like I read in The Book on Managing Rental Properties, you can also make the lease the "bad guy" and be firm on enforcing the lease of the property you own. I'm wondering what you think is the better approach especially considering the fact that your name will be listed as the owner on the county/city GIS website that the tenants could easily see. I feel like it would be a bad situation if the tenant actually looks up the listed owner of the property, then confronts you and you are caught in a lie.

Secondly, considering that the owner and owner address are both public info and easily accessible on the city GIS site, is there any way to keep your personal address private? I have a feeling there isn't if you are wanting the property in your name to avoid setting up an LLC and get residential financing on the property instead of commercial. I agree its not good to have your personal address easily accessible to tenants but are there any other options?

Thanks!!

We're in the same situation here with the county website. If you want to hide your address here, you can generally set up a mail box with a UPS Store, and use that.

You can get a fake ID in some other name and if there are plenty of pics of you floating around the Web, claim you're the owner's cousin to explain the physical resemblance.

But generally, if you're self-managing and dealing with a situation when you're renting out single family and residential small multiplex (up to quadplex), this kind of thing isn't a good idea. When you buy the property, you're going to have to introduce yourself to the neighbors. You will tend to learn about and acquire properties with a certain proximity to each other, so you may end up owning multiple properties in a small area. Keeping the fake and real names straight with everybody could get complicated.

As far as making the lease the bad guy goes...I live in Allegheny County, in Pennsylvania. The local district magistrates have enormous authority in dictating what you should do or shouldn't do for a tenant, and the kind of lease sticklers you're talking about don't do well in court. "The lease is the lease is the lease" will work up to a point when you're in court trying to evict your tenant, but not beyond that point. You're not going to be able to use the lease to enforce all kinds of arbitrary, petty, often vindictive rules, as we often see here by new or mentally deficient landlords writing here on Bigger Pockets.

So for us, the best alternative is to introduce ourselves as the landlords, have a straightforward lease, screen carefully, and avoid signing leases for more than six months or a year.