Pretty Leaves! Pretty Soon! Better Prepare Your Residential Apartment Rentals Pretty Quick!

Two short months ago we were enjoying our vacations, going to the beach, having family BBQ’s, and working on our tans. It happens every year when we say it in September, “The Summer went by so fast this year”. This week I have already been stopped in traffic by local school buses loading up sleepy-eyed students in disbelief that they are on their way back to school. As much as I hate to admit it myself, the days are getting […]

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Avoid Revolving Door Housing Court Eviction Costs from Bad Property Managers

Your property should not be a revolving door of bad tenants coming in and going out. The number one cost you cannot ever recover from a property, is a vacancy. When you are not collecting rent you cannot cover your debt for the property. You cannot pay your contractors; you cannot pay your mortgage taxes and insurance. The worst of all is that you cannot make repairs and your property accumulates deferred maintenance issues. This is the slow death of […]

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Is Your Residential Property Manager Well Trained?

Lord help me if I run into another would be property manager who just came fresh from some seminar and thinks they know everything they need to know to run a property successfully. This is not a get rich quick business. This is a customer service relationship business. The faster this notion becomes clear to the property owner or manager, then so much better for everyone involved in the process. Having some sales experience is always a plus, but customer service […]

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Rental Property Diagnostics and Reporting

Good news travels fast, and bad news travels even faster. For you to be on top of your game as a landlord you need to have measurable information at your fingertips at a moments notice. Think about it. In medical terms, the patient is your dear and beloved property. That would make your property manager your attending physician monitoring the health and well being of the property. You would not want a doctor that knew or even suspected a problem or […]

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Before You Sign That Dotted Line: Property Manager Contracts

When you are interviewing a property manager ask to see a copy of their service contract. This is a good indicator of how any given scenario may play out once they are your manager for your property. A typical property manager contract is just like a tenant-at-will rental agreement you hold with your tenant-at-will resident. You want to be able to end the contract mutually either way in 30 days. If you are not happy with them and the service […]

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Door To Door Comparison on Property Managers for Landlords

How many properties does your property manager own like yours? This one is kind of a trick question. Most property managers started out managing their own properties and then take on similar properties like the ones they already own. That makes pretty good common sense. However, you have to keep your eye on the ball here. I have heard stories of some unscrupulous property managers actually taking good tenants out of properties they manage, and placing them into properties they own. […]

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Goldilocks and the 3 Property Managers: Finding the Right Fit

This is a great follow-up to the previous Blog post. In the previous post we wanted to know if the property manager owned properties like ours. In this Blog post, we really want to know if they manage properties like yours. Here is a good example. Let’s say you have a B property, in a B neighborhood, with bread-and-butter blue-collar tenants. That’s great. This is usually a property type that has a pretty good solid tenant base and usually has a […]

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