I recently left the country for a week, headed to a place where I literally had no phone service and limited access to email. That wasn’t a one-time-only event. I plan to do it again at the end of this month. Oh yeah, and once more in August.<\/p>\n
Every landlord who read that first paragraph is either cringing or gaping in awe. Because, as we all know, the moment your feet leave U.S. soil is the precise<\/em> moment that your pipes burst, toilets overflow and a tree crashes into your roof. The correlation is near-scientific.<\/p>\n Here’s the part where I mention that I oversee 5 rental units. One of these has a property manager — an excellent, highly experienced, self-motivated manager, someone whom I hardly need to manage (you know, “managing the manager.”) So I barely blinked when it came to leaving that property behind for a week. My gal’s got it.<\/p>\n The other four properties, however, posed a different story. Under normal circumstances, when I’m in town, I don’t mind overseeing these myself. One is a triplex, so all the units are consolidated under a single roof. The other is in great condition and occupied by the world’s best tenant. So when I’m in town, its not worthwhile for me — at least at this early stage in my landlording career — to outsource that management.<\/p>\n But of course, I can’t leave the country for a week without finding an “interim property manager.” And step one was figuring out who to ask.<\/p>\n Here’s what I looked for in my “interim” manager:<\/p>\n 1) reliable,<\/p>\n 2) experienced at managing properties,<\/p>\n 3) reliable,<\/p>\n 4) eager to watch your units for a week,<\/p>\n 5) reliable<\/p>\n There’s one quality I keep stressing (I’ll let you guess which one), and I’m doing it for more than just the sake of a weak attempt at humor. When you’re away — when you’re really, truly unplugged — the person you leave in charge back at home isn’t immediately accountable to anyone.<\/em> No one is managing him. No one is pressing him to finish the job.<\/p>\n And if you return to your hometown and find everything in disarray, your interim manager is probably capable of weaving and spinning some type of he-said, she-said story that will leave your head spinning. You’ll play detective, piecing together the details of what happened from your tenant, the neighbors, the physical evidence left behind. It’ll be a mess. You’ll want to avoid this.<\/p>\n And so finding a reliable person is — in my opinion — more important than experience or enthusiasm.<\/p>\n How do you gage reliability? That’s more art than science. Promptness (is that a word?) in answering phone calls and emails is a good start. Following through on appointments is key. \u00a0But, again, let you gut be your guide.<\/p>\n