What do landlords dislike about property managers?

Question

If you've been dissatisfied with property managers in the past, what were your biggest pain points?

Landlords, what is your biggest objective to property management?

What made your experience with PM better than anticipated? What qualities in a property manager are most important to you as an investor?

Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

Richard Cole · Answer

Thank you all for sharing your perspectives.

As investors and property managers, our goal is to align our business strategy with the owner's and property's best interest, to maximize the ROI of the management cost.

Best of luck in all your investments this year.

John T. · Answer

@Richard Cole

Problems:

1.  Intentionally or negligently failing to properly screen tenants; and

2.  Intentionally or negligently failing to properly and timely account for rental revenue.

Solution:

Fired PM and went to self-management.

Chuy Gonzalez · Answer

Lazy A. F. property manager that accepted any tenant with a pulse resulting in high tenant turnover. The solution was firing the bad pm.

Rachel H. · Answer

@Richard Cole Usually it's communication issues. Hope that helps!

Ali Boone · Answer

My response is 100% about the communication. Nothing is more frustrating than a PM that sucks at communication, and the best PMs I've ever worked with communicate with me really easily. I'm not even a high-maintenance client...I'm just talking about basic communication.

So far, over all the years I've dealt with PMs, there's been a direct correlation between a PMs communication and their performance. The minute the communication goes bad, the property goes bad. When communication is good, things are good. My hunch has been that the communication goes bad because they dread talking to me and fessing up to things having gone wrong or things not going correctly. Can't say that for sure, but seems to be the trend.

Stephen Diakos · Answer

Hello all. I live in North Carolina and have a rental property in Florida. As such, having a good management is a must. I self managed the property for the first year, without incident, but then things fell apart when that tenant left. I looked for a management company that would handle the eviction, clean/repair the property, rent, and then manage. Having one that only charges $100 to renew a lease and/or find a new tenant is a plus as well. With such a distance, having a team that acts quickly, has open communication, and identifies market trends, i.e. suggests rent increases based on the market, are all huge pluses in my book. Anything less than that just wouldn't work.

Good luck everyone.

Thomas S. · Answer

I do not have a personal objection to property managers since I have never used one. I have never used a PM because there is no PM that can manage my properties as well as I do. They have no skin in the game and for that reason are not adequately motivated to give 100%.

Ryan Sajdera · Answer

I had to have a realtor go over to a unit that we are selling to check on my property once. The previous tenants moved out, and the property management team didn’t bother to check to see if the heat was on. I noticed because my gas bill was like...15 bucks in the middle of Feb in the Midwest... Fortunately no pipes froze, but i was pretty mad. Another thing is misinformation on advertisements. They messed up an advertised price once- fortunately i caught it before they signed any leases but that little mistake could have cost me a ton. You will ALWAYS find things that PM’s do that you don’t like, but remember.. Nobody cares about your property like YOU. Manage your managers-they have 100’s of units.

When we screen managers, we look for things like how well they screen tenants. Do they do background checks? Credit checks? (One told me once that they just “google” their applicants!) I didn’t even finish that interview... Ask to see their lease. Do they keep the late fees or do they give it to the owner? Do they call their owners when a tenant wants to negotiate anything? Do they have an attorney that represents them and reviews their contracts?  A good property manager is worth their weight in gold. IMO there is a level of expectation that the manager will not be perfectly in tune with you, but that’s why you have regular touch points via phone or email to check on progress, changes, etc.

Ryan

Caleb Heimsoth · Answer

@Richard Cole. Communication and timely handling of repair costs