All Forum Posts by: Kevin Epp

Property management is not rocket science. Property managers make problems go away.

PMCs focus on their owners for growth. Tenant side is generally more straight forward.

It is all about the experience with the owner. It is not a transaction. Not a one-time purchase. Often times, you're locked into a years-long relationship. Every expense or fee that is incurred could be talked about. For the owners who just look at you with a price-tag, they generally do not understand the business. I recommend not bringing these owners on. Any expense will be too much for them. Take that how I mean it. For obvious reasons, your pricing is important of course.

Every investor does not need a PM. No matter how hot you think your PMC is - there are investors who still do not find value in what PMs do. These people are not your market. Ego detached, I do not recommend trying to find a way to please these people. You could do your work for free and it would still be too much for them because you don't do things the way they believe is right.

I recommend developing owner-screening criteria to make sure you bring on the right folks and the right properties.  Early on, I took on every owner who came to me because I needed volume. You'll get to a point where you can say "no" to prospective owner clients who are not within your "buy box" per-say.

There's been a lotttt of money dumped into PM to fundamentally change the experience. You can make good money in a boring business by following the advice of what has already worked (for both tenant, owner, and PM) and doing things better than 70% of the market.

If you don't want them in your property, you don't have to renew the lease.

Reason for non-renewal: habitual late payments.

Don't know Maryland's laws, but make sure you have prior documentation for notices given to them for the late payment. A lot of places up here in WA you must have cause for a lease non-renewal.

Check your local laws too, a lot of places require proper notice to be given prior to lease non-renewal.

If this is a legitimate mold issue: need to get it fixed. Ask a home inspector for their mold guy if you don't have one already.

If these are otherwise high maintenance tenants: offer them the opportunity to break the lease and move out with no penalty (besides damages, of course). They'll just keep coming back with new issues for you to fix.

How to tell if this is a legit mold issue or if it's the tenants problem: initial sniff test goes as follows....did the previous tenants have this issue? During your inspection process the past four years did this mold exist? If yes, then you need to fix it. If no, has anything changed above this room since then? If no, then likely the tenants are causing it. If yes, things have changed with the infrastructure of the home since January 2024 and it needs to be remedied.

Moving forward: make a mold addendum for your new leases. It essentially states that the tenant acknowledges there is no new mold in the home. Sidenote: mold is everywhere in the environment. We're just talking about the dangerous stuff that makes people sick and post on BP forums about it.

I would never accept a tenant with an eviction. Everyone who lives in C class properties is not getting evicted. There are plenty of good folks who just live in blue collar areas.

Most people do one of two things:

1. Just move on and sell the place, get a new PM, or disavow PMs and self-manage

or

2. See how much you would get if you get what you want via litigation. Divide that by the time required. Compare that against what your time is worth.

I'm sure you're a great person. But hear me out. As a PM....if I knew you sued your previous PM because they didn't communicate to your liking and you didn't like how they handled a situation (though they handled it and fixed it regardless), I'd probably pass on you regardless of the property.

WA state does:

1. However much the remainder of the lease costs

or

2. An amount reasonably required for the time to rent it out (plus any damages). We do two months rent + any damages in this case.

Whichever is less.

Google MA state law in regards to eviction notices. State websites will have it in their revised codes.

Look at Sutton, MA (and the county it resides) to see if anything else is on top of this. They'll have it publicly too.

Decide if you can stomach non-compliance with a tenant in these scenarios. Physically jot down the timeline for an eviction.

Call an eviction lawyer and ask them how long it takes to be seen in court right now. A lot of jurisdictions are backed up, especially large metro regions.

Evictions are very rare, if you use strong screening criteria.

Leave them in there.

If you don't, people rent them (or have their own).

Usually a non-issue either way.

This is normal. Would be an extra step to bill you fees otherwise.

Would hire an eviction attorney yesterday.

If you're a DIY landlord and haven't started the process yet after 4 months, you are way behind the curve already. Cannot afford any mistakes on the procedural stuff of evictions.

Would contact a PM but not for the eviction. For when the house is vacated, cleaned up, and rent ready. Have them on standby to step in and get the process going to rent it properly.