5 Reason to Fire your property manager

5 Reasons to Fire Your Property Manager

Are you a frustrated landlord that’s:

• Sick and tired of dealing with an unresponsive property manager who can’t seem to develop a long term plan for your property that works…
• Upset with personnel who are incompetent, poor managers, or simple minds with a limited ability to plan strategically for the long term…
• Frustrated with property managers who don’t have the ability to coordinate the “rent ready” process or don’t supply appropriate documentation for any contractor-related work…
• Disappointed that they don’t receive accurate, detailed, or clear income statements…
• No longer willing to work with managers who forget meetings, don’t answer phone calls, forget to accomplish tasks or fail to meet the goals you discuss…

Here are 5 tell-tale signs that it might be time to fire your property manager:

Sign # 1. Not meeting target goals such as occupancy, collections, and cost control

If you and your manager agree that your vacancy should not exceed 5% per year and you shouldn’t have more than 2% in uncollected rents and the manager’s performance falls short, then may be time for a conversation, unless there are other factors in play that are outside the manager’s control.

Sign # 2. Lack of Communication and Accessibility.

A good property manager should be proactive. They should be on top of things at your property, and they should be reporting to you regularly. Nothing stresses me out more than a manager who doesn’t communicate well. There are two pieces to what I consider to be successful communication: 1. they tell me when anything out of the ordinary happens and 2. they are easily accessible if I need them for anything.  For me that means I don’t constantly talk to a secretary who never knows one thing from another either. I personally, and this is only preference not a rule, don’t like calling a big office and talking to different people all the time. I want one guy who is my manager, not a big group.

Sign # 3. Nickel-and-Diming.  Don’t be Nickel and Dimmed!

This one isn’t necessarily completely wrong by itself but it’s certainly annoying and to me it’s a sign of low quality, which is likely to result in a poor management experience.  I pay more than the standard for my current property manager, but I also get a lot of freebies out of that and way fewer headaches. I get minimal repair bills during the year, minimal everything bills. To me, that is a lot nicer than paying less per month and getting hit hard by bills left and right. Some of the things I’ve seen manager’s charge for are asinine, really. Plus, when you are getting nickel-and-dimed, I think it instills a lack of trust in what the manager is doing. Because in that scenario, essentially he (or she) profits every time something goes wrong.

Sign # 4.  Your Property Manager Doesn’t Inspect the Property

Property managers typically conduct a yearly inspection inside the property and a quarterly inspection of the exterior. If your property manager isn’t living up to this bargain, it’s time to let them go. Regular inspections are necessary to ensure your property stays in good shape. You should receive a report that lets you know what sort of repairs are needed, whether there are any code violations, and anything else you would need to know about your property. If you don’t get a detailed inspection report each year, something’s wrong.

Let’s say you own a single-family home, and your property manager tells you they will drive by your property every three months to check on the home’s exterior. Your tenant has been there for nine months, and you have received no bad news from the property manager. Meanwhile, a friend of yours was in the area and reported to you that the front lawn looks as if it could be on American Pickers or Hoarding: Buried Alive. It appears as if your property manager wasn’t doing what they said they would.

Sign # 5.  You’re Constantly Getting Bad Tenants

Part of the property manager’s job is to get your property rented … but not just to anyone. If the property manager isn’t doing a good job of screening tenants and is putting deadbeat tenants in your property, it’s time to fire the property manager.  The goal is to rent the property at market value to A+ credit tenants and drive down operating costs.

Tip: Before you hire a property manager, ask what percentage of tenants they’ve evicted. This number should be low.

Although it’s possible to manage your rental properties yourself, doing so isn’t always the best decision, and that’s when hiring a property manager comes in handy.

• Maybe you don’t live near your property and have no one to check on it regularly.
• Maybe you have many rental properties and just don’t have the time to manage them.
• Maybe you simply don’t want to be involved in property management duties and prefer to be only an investor.

A good property manager will focus on the following disciplines:

• Tenant Retention
• Communication
• Financial Stewardship
• Attention To Detail
• Ability To Read People
• And Digital Marketing