What are things you wish you could improve about prop. managment

[Nicholas Judd]

Coming into real estate investing something I learned from the start is how much people dislike property management companies. A common complaint I hear is how they feel like there property is treated as just a number or they didn't properly screen tenants and/or monitor the property and now they have to repair a trashed rental squeezing all the profits they hoped to gain.  

My question to the BP world is what is something a property management company could do to make you sleep easy with bringing your properties to them to manage. What do you dislike about your PM company? If you were in charge, what would you change? What do you wish your PM did that they just don't do? Simply, How can PM companies be better?

Also, what do you love about your PM company?

[Steve Vaughan]

Originally posted by @Nicholas Judd:

@Steve Vaughan Can you elaborate a little more as far as spreading those fees out over the tenancy. Are you talking about placement fees, start up fees, etc. ? 

As far as repair requests, would you be willing to pay a higher monthly premium if it meant there was no repair up charge? 

When you say to triage repair requests, how might one do that? 

 The vacancy-fill fee.  Spread it out.  If I pay you one month's rent to fill a vacancy, stand behind your tenant choice and spread it over the tenancy or at least 6 months.

By triage repair requests - I mean to ask a clarifying question or 2.  If a tenant calls and says 'my sink  (stove, fridge, a/c) is broke', ask questions.  How is it broke?  Tons of things can be rectified easily over the phone.

The repair up-charge is awesome.  Not only do you make more when you immediately call tradesmen at $100/min, you have a negative incentive to save us money by asking simple questions.  Hence my request to triage these. Woo-hoo!  Guess I'll self-manage forever.