As an owner of a Wesley Chapel property management company, I've noticed a severe slow-down in available renters from November 1 through January 10th. This certainly is no surprise to most property owners. Tenants, just like homeowners, don't want to move during the Holidays. Everyone is saving up for Christmas, families are coming into town, and a lot is going on. But, if you have a property for rent, what do you do?
Now, I will describe some hopefully insightful ideas as a Wesley Chapel property manager in a moment but let me first emphasize the standard "blocking and tackling" in renting a home quickly. One, answer the phones 7 days a week, especially evening and weekends. I know it not the most fun thing to do, but it will make a huge impact during the slow season.
Two, process applications in 3 days or less.Get the background checks for credit and criminal ran on the first day. Reach out to previous landlords and current job of tenant by the next day or sooner. You'd be surprised how getting on top of the approval or denial of rental applications will dramatically reduce your vacancy. Often landlords delay this process, and the good tenants are still looking, and often find something else.
As an owner of a Gibsonton Property Management company, I deal with all sorts of owners/clients. They can range from the frustrating to serene and everything in between. The most difficult challenge in owning a property management company is dealing with owner complaints and requests.
As a Gibsonton Property Manager, we are far from perfect and make mistakes all the time. There are so many balls that we are juggling that dropping a few here and there is normal. My personal mission is developing my own software database to help us drop far less than our competition, but that is a story for another day.
As the owner of a Plant City property management company, I meet a lot of private landlords in all sorts of distressed situations. In fact, I just met a retired welder, who owns a nice mobile home lot on 2 acres. He has tenants who having been paying for almost 3 years but just got cited for code violations (trash in the yard.)
He called me because we specialize in these sorts of situations as a Plant City Property manager. This is the first time he has seen the property since he rented to them. He has been living out of state. Needless to say, the inside of the home was equally trashed as the outside.
When we showed up to look at the home, she started screaming at us and demanded we leave, so we left. Keep in mind the tenant is paying the rent each month, but the lease has been up for about 6 months. The owner doesn’t know what to do.
Can he just kick them out or file for eviction? How does he get them to leave?
In Florida, if a tenant is violating the terms of the lease, you must give them a 7-day notice on...
As a Brandon Property Management company, I just recently hired two general contractors for two different projects. Both had done work for our companies over the years and had good reputations, but it was the first time I hired them for some personal construction projects.
One of them, I hired to add some windows and move a sliding glass door. It required some block work and some advanced carpentry work. The 2nd GC I hired to renovate a house I bought as a Brandon Property Manager which he agreed to do for $35,000.
The quality of the work for both projects were excellent. The time frames were delayed. This is where normal folks start getting upset, and I must admit it does bother me a bit. In this case, I didn’t give either one of them a hard time, because I could clearly see the quality and attention to detail was superb.
Most new investors get what I call “Deal Fever.” What is it? Well it is the overwhelming desire to just do a deal and buy a property. This is especially strong when you’ve been looking for awhile and lost out on some previous deals, or when you start counting the money you are going to make before you have it under contract. I always think about this as a St. Petersburg Property Management Company looking for deals.
I know you are saying it, because I said it too when I first started out, “that won’t happen to me!” As a St. Petersburg Property Managerwith all these years under my belt, I still catch myself sliding into this condition.
To ignore this Fever takes lots of practice and experience. Even experience investors, still fall into this condition all the time. It is perhaps the most dangerous tendency then anything else, when searching for deals.
What are the symptoms? Let me share them from my own personal experience.
- You feel excitement because you think you found a deal and are determined to get this one.
- You start calculating how much you can make. The only challenge is this tends to be overly optimistic, especially when you are competing against others in a Seller’s market
- The price goes above what you think is a good deal, and you rework the numbers to still make it work.
- The price keeps going up and you start sacrificing your profit margin. Surely appreciation will catch up to me, right?
- You feel emotionally invested and it hurts to think of walking away from the deal at a higher price.
- You tell your family and friends what you found, and they start asking you how the negotiations are going.
- You go looking for comps (comparable properties) to justify a higher purchase price.
- You think prices or rents are going to continue to rise and so a higher purchase price is justified.
- You visit the property multiple times trying to figure out what you can cut in order to pay more.
- You started lining up vendors to do the work even though you don’t have it under contract.
Over the last year, the Florida real estate market has gone red hot. Deals are flying off the Multiple Listing Service in a day or two. As a Wesley Chapel Property Management company, it can be frustrating because you submit a full price offer, and the deal gets sold to someone else.
After a while, as a Wesley Chapel Property Manager, I started to get discourage about finding a good investment property. The competition is so fierce. Eventually, I figured out what was going on, and I’d like to let you in on an insider’s secret.
When a market becomes a strong seller’s market, the listing agent realizes she is in the catbird seat. There are literally a dozen people the listing agent could sell the property to at full price or near full price. Suddenly the listing agent is the prettiest girl in school and everyone is vying for her attention.
The listing agent starts thinking, “Why should I sell this property to someone represented by another real estate agent? I would have to split the commission.” So
One of the biggest roadblocks to financial success is what I call the “Savings Ceiling.” It is in my opinion as an Apollo Beach Property Manager, one of the number one reasons, why everyday people struggle making progress toward financial freedom. What is it, you say?
Well it took me until I reached my forties as the owner of an Apollo Beach Property Management company to notice this phenomenon, and the insidious way it keeps people broke. Have you ever noticed that most people have a certain number they need in savings to feel secure?
It could be $2000, $5000, $9000, or more in a savings account. The number really doesn’t matter. It is just the psychological number people have that makes them feel secure. Once they reach this number then a strange thing happens...
As a Saint Petersburg property management company, we work with a great deal of Section 8 rentals. The challenge we always have is some portion of this tenant base is filthy, and they cause a tremendous amount of damage while living in our homes.
We’ve noticed over the years as a St Petersburg property manager, the worst of the worst Section 8 tenant are newer tenants on the program. We no longer accept anyone who just got on the program, because there is no proof they will be clean and decent tenants.
The second thing we discovered is the worst Section 8 tenants tend to be
About eight years ago, I attended a real seminar and ended up having dinner with several the speakers. The topic of the hedge funds and private equity buying up tens of thousands of single family homes came up. As an owner of a Tampa property management company and an active real estate investor, I had strong opinions on this subject. Everyone was going around the table giving their opinions of this and how we thought it was going to work out for these new players.
The consensus was we thought the hedge funds and private equity were crazy and paying too high of prices. We also thought they were ill equipped to manage all these assets in so many different markets. This was right in the middle of the Great Recession. As a Tampa property manager, I personally felt they lacked market knowledge and were paying too high of prices and were going to get crushed managing these single-family homes. It turned out we were 100% wrong!!
The only person who didn’t feel like they were crazy was an investor in his late sixties. He explained
Running a Clearwater Property Management Company for the last 19 years has taught me a great deal about frustration. More specifically, the frustration tenants get when things go wrong. If you are a landlord, you are the obvious target. The real question is should you take responsibility.
For example, as a Clearwater Property Manager, I’m representing an owner whose septic tank has collapsed. The home’s bathrooms and tubs are backed up with sewage. The home is unlivable, and the septic companies are refusing to give us a quoted price. They want an open checkbook, and I guess they are busy as hell.
So, what do you do? As a landlord in Florida and I assume most states, you are not responsible for Acts of God. You are under no legal requirement to put them up in a hotel. You should know this. Have this defined in your lease, and mentally rehearse these scenarios in advance.