I don’t know about you, but hot real estate markets are boring. It’s great when you want to sell a property, but horrible when you want to buy. As the owner of a Tampa property management company
The challenge is the normal, smaller investors tends to want to invest in real estate market because it is hot. They see their friends making money flipping properties or watch the countless show on TV about flipping your way to millions.
During my career in property management in Tampa, I’ve noticed that when people start getting hyper interested in real estate is when a recession is soon to follow. The challenge is just sitting on the sideline “sucking your thumbs.” That’s hard…really hard!
Warren Buffett once said, “You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.”
I get calls all the time from potential investors wanting to buy real estate, right now. There is a human tendency to feel like good times are just going to last and last, and the same things goes for recessions. People want to put their money to work now before they miss out on the opportunities. I’ve finally stop advising potential clients on the phone not to buy, because they really don’t want to hear it.
As an Apollo Beach Property Management company, we see dozens of rental applications every month and have processed thousands in our career. I’m always looking for patterns to help me weed out applications and choose the best possible tenant.
As I always tell potential clients, as an Apollo Beach property manager, we know that the bad, nightmare tenants don’t suddenly wake up one day and become those people. They’ve been behaving irresponsibly in every aspect of their lives for a very long time. Doing proper background checks and carefully interpreting what you see is extremely important.
As part of my rental criteria, I require at least 2 years of rental history. What I often find is people submitting rental verification information stating their parents or extended family are their landlords.
This is not a good landlord reference. I know one can easily argue that...the person is renting from these family members. This is true. The problem is do you really think the landlord will give you an honest assessment of how good their family member behaved as a tenant? No, not a chance.
Running a Riverview Property Management Company requires a tremendous amount of delegation and attention to detail. Years ago, I came across a book by David Allen titled “Getting Things Done…the art of stress-free productivity.” I have a habit that I call “My Random Walk of Inspiration” where I periodically read or listen to an audio book on a subject I’ve not studied in years. Well back in 2002, I was looking for a book, and realized I hadn’t read anything in years on organization skills. So, I found this book and read it.
The book changed my entire professional career as a Riverview Property Manager. I went from running a small business working 70 or 80 hours a week, never feeling like I got anything substantial done, and hating my work, to working 35 hours a week, getting 3 or 4 times as much work done, and loving my business. How did that happen?
As a Wesley Chapel Property Management Company, we have a hard and fast rule that vendor bills are paid weekly. Why? Well, I got this idea from an owner of an apartment community I met 15 years ago. Every time he entered the property manager’s office, this guy would turn over the “Bills to be paid” accordion folder and shake it. If any bills dropped off, he would gently admonish the property manager. You see this guy remembered how much he struggled with cash flow when he ran a smaller construction company. Clients were notorious for delaying payments 30 to 120 days. This put a tremendous amount of pressure on this guy’s business.
When you think about it, most Wesley Chapel property management companies and any other small business will net 10-15% of revenue if they are well run. If customers delay payments 120 days, the small business owner must borrow off credit cards or not take a salary to meet payroll and overhead. A lot of bigger clients (Fortune 1000 companies) delay payment so they can collect the interest earned on the money for the extra time. Smaller clients delay payment because they are not organized, don’t recognize the importance of paying their vendors fast, or they are being stretched by their own clients.
I’m reading a very interesting book on marketing called “Building a Story Brand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen.” In it, the author discusses the critical need to make your client the hero of the story to capture their interest and get them emotionally invested in your message. Too often, Saint Petersburg Property Management Companies tell the same old, trite story about how they’ve been in business for over 20 years, have XYZ designations or licenses, and customer service is their number one priority. Blah, Blah, Blah, right?
Saint Petersburg Property Management clients are looking for solutions for a happy ending to their story. They are not interested in how great my company is and all the technical features that make us look brilliant. I’m the first to admit that I sometimes lose track of this concept and wallow in all the details of property management that my client probably could care less about.
I’ve started giving serious thought to every aspect of my client experience. How can I make my clients the hero and myself as just the guide, or the Obie Wan to their Luke Skywalker?
My first efforts have been
As a Clearwater Property Manager, I’ve found it critical to have a system for dealing with tenant requests and concerns rapidly while staying off the phone as much as possible. I just had a tenant who was charged a non-refundable pet fee. He had already been living in the unit for a few months and my maintenance man reported a dog when he went by to do a repair. No pet was listed on the lease. The tenant claims he removed the dog and was just house sitting for the animal for a family member. Since we gave him the option of either removing the dog or paying the pet fee and he choose removal, why were we charging him a pet fee, he asked?
He had emailed our Clearwater Property Management Company three times today (Friday) asking this. It was close to closing time, and I double checked with a staff member to see if we had replied. We had not. Evidently the person who had charged the pet fee was off today. So, I shot an email to the tenant letting him know this and made a reminder task to make sure this was addressed on Monday. The tenant responded immediately expressing his gratitude for my response.
As an owner of a Tampa Property Management Company, we used to file the occasional eviction paperwork for our clients. We thought we were providing a good service. We were dead wrong!
It took me a couple of years to notice what the judges were doing in dealing with evictions cases that we filed instead of using an attorney. First off, I notice the cases would take longer. Normally in Florida, a typical eviction case takes about 30 days from filing to getting the property back. As a Tampa Property Manager, our cases were stretching 60 and 90 days. I thought at first it was just an anomaly, but it kept happening.
Then I noticed, the judges would allow a tenant to contest our eviction and have a court date to argue, without first putting all the past due money into the court registry. In Florida, it is a state law that tenants cannot request a court date to argue an eviction, unless they pay the past due money into the courts (of course there are exemptions for extremely bad behavior by the landlord). The reasoning for this law I’m sure is to prevent tenants from causing expensive delays to landlord, when they have no intention of paying the rent.
Well, what I found is that the judges would routinely give the tenant a court date to argue the eviction, without having paid the past due rent.
What finally clicked for me...
I used to have a receptionist at my office who never stood up when clients walked in the door. Just a simple decision made without any negative intent, but it sent a message subconsciously to every tenant: “You’re Not Welcome.” This message seemed to escalate the emotion of a tenants if they are coming into our office upset for some reason. In their mind, we at fault because their refrigerator broken on a Saturday night. The receptionist wasn’t thinking about the perception of her remaining seated behind the desk. Fortunately, I eventually noticed and got it corrected.
The point is as an owner of a Tampa Property Management Company, I discovered it was critical to keep some line of instant communication open between my clients and myself. Currently, I do this by putting on my website that they can contact us immediately by Facebook posting. The only person who monitors the Facebook page is me. Do I get bombarded with emails at all hours of the day and night? No, typically I get less than one message a day.
Most landlords or Brandon Property Management companies put up their ads for an available rental on the Internet and wait for the phones to ring. STOP…there is a better way! The problem with answering your phone is often you find yourself answering the same basic questions over and over again. This is mentally draining and a big waste of time. It took me many years to figure out a better way. Now I set up a funnel system as a Brandon property manager.
First off, I try and make my rental ads far more descriptive and include a detailed YouTube Video of the rental. My website has my qualifying criteria and is referenced in each ad.
The phone number is given in the ad, but I request them to email or text me instead, because I can answer far more quickly. This allows me to shoot them standard answers and details, without getting involved in a lengthy conversation of the application process, their life story, or why something bad on their credit, is not such a big deal after all. This is the hidden gem of my funnel system.
We still respond 7 days a week to prospective tenants but were able to get people answers or provide direction, while sidestepping time consuming conversations with prospects that haven’t even seen the property.
Let me start by saying, that a landlord has two primary responsibilities. The first is providing a well-maintained property and staying on top of maintenance. The second is treating your tenants with dignity and respect. Violate any of these two, and you can find yourself in for a world of aggravation and potential legal hassles, or worse. The goal of this article is to give you two tools that I’ve found work extraordinary well, when facing a tenant making unreasonable demands.
We’ve all encountered moments where a tenant is behaving in a rude, threatening manner when you are doing the right thing. How do you confront them with a firm “No” or with an answer that is not what they want to hear?
The most common reason for this negative tenant behavior is maintenance requests. Sometimes, the tenant refuses to think that a non-emergency repair can’t wait a day or more, and should be fixed right now. While this can be true for emergency repairs, like a burst water pipe, 95%+ of the time this is not the case. The tenant is frustrated, and the maintenance issue is making his or her personal time uncomfortable in some way. We can all relate to the common example of the AC breaking in the evening, right?
The key in these “Moments of Truth” is how you respond to their verbal tirades, threats, or aggressive stance.