Things We Have Recently Done as a Tampa Property Manager to Improve!! (April 2018)
Outside Vendor Website Complete!
We just completed the outside vendor website for our Tampa property management company. I’ll be testing it this month and rolling it out sometime in May of 2018, for all our outside vendors.
Hopefully, this should decrease the time it takes to complete turns and getting your vacant home ready for marketing and a new tenant. By allowing outside vendors to access their work orders from a website (instead of sending them emails), they can complete real time and their bill will be processed within a couple of days. This gives these vendors an incentive to use the system and tells us the moment the work is complete, so we can immediately move to the next assignment in finishing the turn of the property.
What to avoid having a rental property sit vacate for months? Inspection by you or someone other than the contractor is the key. As a Clearwater Property Management company, we developed an extremely detailed checklist for this inspection. I highly recommend as a landlord, you have a detailed inspection form that you go through after you complete each “Turn” (repairs needed to make unit ready for marketing).
The first inspection after turn is complete will save you a lot of money in lost rent, because contractors you hire will miss things on their punch-out list or simply do a poor job on certain repairs. Other times, you missed or didn’t notice something when you made the original punch-out list, or something bad happened during the Turn, like a leak or the contractor left trash from supply purchases.
As a Property Manager in Brandon, Tampa and other areas, we developed a custom software that allows us to assign repair requests directly to our in-house staff via computer tablets. Here are 7 reasons why this will benefit you as a client of Stress Free.
The idea here is that you do some checks before you spend the rental applicant’s money on THE background checks. That way, if they are clearly not qualified, you can refund the application fee back to the applicant before you spend any money.
Now I know there are some landlords that will keep the money, no matter what and I don’t have the space to argue this point in this article. However, as a high-volume Tampa property management company, I have come to understand the importance of pissing off, as few people as possible.
Have you ever noticed when a tenant is late with the rent they start reporting repairs that are needed? This sort of behavior ends up costing you a lot of money in unnecessary repairs, aggravating conversations with the tenant, and constant fights about whether the late fee will be paid. Am I right?
As an amateur student of psychology over the years, I’ve formed an opinion and a system for dealing with this situation more constructively.
It just seems like good customer service as a Riverview Property Manager or private landlord to give out your phone number to a tenant. After all, if something goes wrong like a pipe bursting, you want to know about it right away, right?
Please keep in mind this article is written for landlords just starting out. I do not condone ignoring tenant repairs or being a slumlord. I recognize that some landlords are like this. I'm trying to give out tips to help quality landlords not burn out and sell their rentals. Enough said, please continue reading. :)
Well the answer to that is yes & no! You or a Riverview Property Management company do need to know about emergency repairs right away. Having a pipe burst in your rental homes is a big deal, obviously. However, there is no reason why you can’t just give out your email address and develop systems for true emergencies.
4) They delay submitting their rental application and leave information blank, while pressuring you with a deadline of how they must move in or else something terrible will occur. This is a common one that shows up after the tenant has met with you. If they’ve succeeded in getting you to take their money, they will try and delay and guilt you into letting them move in before this is done. Even worse, they’ll just move in.
As the owner of Stress Free Property Management, a Tampa Property Manager, I reviewed thousands of rental applications and talked with more potential applicants than I care to remember. What I’ve discovered over the years are certain behaviors, actions, or stories that if they show up, almost always point to a terrible prospective tenant.
I’ve literally processed and screened thousands of rental applications over the years as a Tampa Property Manager. What I discovered after a few years is that credit and criminal background check companies do not update their database in a timely manner. In other words, there could be civil, criminal, and evictions filed in a county the applicant lives in that will not show on the credit and criminal background check that you pull.
It makes perfect sense that the internet is inundated with discussions about the best property management tools for landlords. The Utah rental market is growing in a way many us have never seen before, and the opportunity to take renting from a side gig to a constant cash flow is the reason real estate investment is so appealing to many Utahns right now. It’s also why so many people are seeking a way to make renting out their property easier.