All Forum Posts by: Steve Rozenberg

How many people make sure that the workers in their property have criminal background checks done or the company is bonded and insured? There was just an incident where a worker that a landlord found on craigslist was hire to do a job and assaulted the resident and robbed her. 

Now the owner is in legal trouble for not doing background on the worker or making sure they were licensed and bonded.

Got it thanks, we have noticed that as we move to manage more expensive rental homes, from $900-$1200 and then have a $3000 or $4000 rental we want to make sure we can present the home correctly to that type of renter. But we also need to systemize it and make it a scalable process because we have a tech that goes and takes these picts and do not want him to make the determination as to which type of picts to take.

@George P. 

 thanks for the Camera information, I will definitely look into this. Much appreciated.

Yes I agree this is a difficult and tough subject. I explain to the owners for properties that we manage, if you put it in the lease then technically you have to enforce it per the contract, so be careful what kind of tough language you have in your leases. You may save $50 in a service charge but have a several thousand dollar mold issue when the tenant moves out. In the end it is your property and your investment and if the tenant leaves you still have the investment and the problem.

We always sit down with every resident and do what we call positioning the lease contract during their on-boarding process. We give them a Resident Handbook and in there are maintenance tips on how they can take care of things like a thrown breaker, backed up toilet etc.. We let the tenant know that if the property is unsafe or uninhabitable there is no question we will act on it. However if they call and have a backed up toilet our customer service rep will walk them through how to plunge the toilet and do some preliminary things prior to sending out a maintenance tech or walk them thru how to reset a breaker. And if they tell us that they tried that we will dispatch the appropriate person but explain that if we go and simply have to reset the breaker that is going to be their bill. 

We look at it as is it cosmetic or structural that is the first question we determine, if it is cosmetic then its a determination of what is the issue and what was the cause. 

But I will say that by reviewing this with the tenant at the signing of the lease and explaining simple things to them has cause misc maint calls down dramatically. But ultimately it is an investment for the owner and it does no good to draw a line in the sand over $50 when the investor has their lifesavings tied to this. I think its a matter of getting out in front of it and having a plan of action for not IF but WHEN it happens.

The tenant is just as much of a client as our owners, we need both of them for this whole thing to work.

We have tried all variations of different date ranges. We've  found that doing them between month six and  month nine seems to be the best way to see  how the tenant is actually treating the property. 

What we do is we actually have a third-party assessment company come out to inspect the home. They charge very inexpensive rates and they give a full professional report to the owner about 20 to 30 pages documenting everything in the property. They do a much better and thorough job then our Maint techs can do for this type of role. We feel it's a bit of a conflict of interest if we were to go in find all these things need to be fixed in our maintenance technicians and oh by the way we will dispatch our guy to do these things. We negotiated volume pricing for our clients and do not uncharge so they get a great deal and very professional team handling their investment .  I feel by doing this it's a little bit better for the owner.

The information we get based on this assessment is our determining factor or one of our determining factors whether or not we are going to renew that tenants lease

Do you ALWAYS enforce the maintenance deductible?

How often do you inspect your rental homes?

For the investors that use real estate agents to list their properties or maybe owners that have higher end rentals, what kind of showing pictures do you use to show the rental?

@Lynn Currie I could not agree more, all the time wasters and people that over pay will move on to another medium to invest and most of us will stay the course and continue to stay in the market. I have investors from Israel, China , Canada and All over the US asking me the minute we have an investor deal make them the first to contact. 

The smart investors are waiting silently to make their move is what I am sensing.

My thoughts are this, when all these people can not sell their homes now (which we are seeing property sales slow) that is great for the rental market for two reasons. 

1. Prices will start to come down and help cashflow, so if you have money and ready to go the deals get better. 2. All the people that lose their jobs may have to downsize to a smaller home or may lose their home and now they become renters.

It sounds bad but a bad economy is actually the best time for investors and landlords. Houston is home to 2 major airlines (United and Southwest) , NASA, Hewlett Packard, The biggest Medical center in the world (if it were its own city it would be 16th in the country), Rice University, One of the largest exporting ports in the country and when the Panama Canal is finished it is predicted to be the largest.

There are over 250,000 Non-Owner occupied homes in the greater Houston area and 65% of the city rents. It is just such a diversified economy here I do not see it crumbling, but I could be wrong.