Tenants surprised of amazing fast service (their words)
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Kevin MoyerBusiness Member
Property Manager · Philadelphia, PA · Member since 2019 · 271 posts · 303 votesI think it has more to do with the quality of the landlord or property manager than their role in the tenant-PM-owner relationship.
On the flip-side, as a property manager I often feel that my hands are tied by the owner to provide quality responsive maintenance toward a tenant.
If I get a 7am notification from a tenant that a 12 y/o dishwasher stopped working, at 8am I will forward the ticket and probably recommend a replacement to the owner. This owner (by the nature of our contract) must approve this expense before I can move forward with the repair. Maybe it takes 2 days to respond? Maybe he asks me to get two quotes from repairmen first? Maybe he simply says 'can't afford right now maybe next month'.
Generally speaking I actually agree that property managers need to be better- but for every property manager there is an owner behind him holding the checkbook...
Otter Property Management4.8632 Reviews
6 Replies
- Rental Property Investor · DFW · Member since 2019 · 30 posts · 14 votes5y
Generalization is always a bad idea. However, nobody will take care of your business like you would. If you provide good customer service, you are already in a winning battle. There are painful tenants and painful landlords, so there has to be painful PM's. The same applies to the opposing point of view. So I would say you are doing something right, but that is not a general rule as there are new and old tired landlords who just let the time go and forget.
Originally posted by @Gonzalo Gaston:
Generalization is always a bad idea. However, nobody will take care of your business like you would. If you provide good customer service, you are already in a winning battle. There are painful tenants and painful landlords, so there has to be painful PM's. The same applies to the opposing point of view. So I would say you are doing something right, but that is not a general rule as there are new and old tired landlords who just let the time go and forget.
I get you, but common decency should be hard to provide whether it's your building or a PM manages it for you. Again, I've tried three different property management companies in CT and in NY. I didn't say all, just five our out six we tried were very bad. One in upstate NY, we gave them a property to manage with 4 out of 5 units rented. When we took it bad six months later, the building was empty. Another property management company was managing a property for us near Yale. One would think they'd have mostly college students and professionals. Right? Nope, they brought in low income people who destroyed several units. Nothing wrong with low income, most of them are lovely, but these brought in crime and drugs. We installed cameras and there were a few that attempted to climb the camera poles and knock out the cameras. Another time, they tried to shoot the camera, not with a firearm, but like a pellet gun, it bounced off. It was so bad we had to sell the complex; but made around 65k on the sale. The new owners were local and also bought the buildings around ours and really made it nice. Just saying, PM companies are questionable at best.. Perhaps the are best when they are young and eager to build a clientele, but when they have a few hundred units under their belt, their service lacks it seems.
- 5yKevin MoyerBusiness MemberProperty Manager · Philadelphia, PA · Member since 2019 · 271 posts · 303 votes
I think it has more to do with the quality of the landlord or property manager than their role in the tenant-PM-owner relationship.
On the flip-side, as a property manager I often feel that my hands are tied by the owner to provide quality responsive maintenance toward a tenant.
If I get a 7am notification from a tenant that a 12 y/o dishwasher stopped working, at 8am I will forward the ticket and probably recommend a replacement to the owner. This owner (by the nature of our contract) must approve this expense before I can move forward with the repair. Maybe it takes 2 days to respond? Maybe he asks me to get two quotes from repairmen first? Maybe he simply says 'can't afford right now maybe next month'.
Generally speaking I actually agree that property managers need to be better- but for every property manager there is an owner behind him holding the checkbook...
Otter Property Management4.8632 Reviews - Property Manager · Windsor Locks, CT · Member since 2016 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes5y
Well said @Kevin Moyer, you made a lot of great points.
@Mike A. I would say that for every 1 good PM there's probably 3 or 4 bad ones, and their fees are usually less, too. Who would have thought, right? Usually "those" owners come back around once they've been burned by the 3 other bad PMs, or they sell the property because they are too cheap to hire good property management.
I think it also depends on the area of the property. The worse the area, the worse the PM, typically. Why would a good PM want to work in a crappy neighborhood? We stopped fielding leads for specific areas in CT a few years ago because it's just not worth the risk / hassle.It's my opinion that a lot of these owners think they can just buy a building and by a snap of their fingers there will be 5 PMs fighting to take on the property. A smart PM isn't going to just agree to take on someone else's problems without fair compensation. Why would we? There's SO many fish in the sea.
Originally posted by @Filipe Pereira:
Well said @Kevin Moyer, you made a lot of great points.
@Mike A. I would say that for every 1 good PM there's probably 3 or 4 bad ones, and their fees are usually less, too. Who would have thought, right? Usually "those" owners come back around once they've been burned by the 3 other bad PMs, or they sell the property because they are too cheap to hire good property management.
I think it also depends on the area of the property. The worse the area, the worse the PM, typically. Why would a good PM want to work in a crappy neighborhood? We stopped fielding leads for specific areas in CT a few years ago because it's just not worth the risk / hassle.It's my opinion that a lot of these owners think they can just buy a building and by a snap of their fingers there will be 5 PMs fighting to take on the property. A smart PM isn't going to just agree to take on someone else's problems without fair compensation. Why would we? There's SO many fish in the sea.
Very true. I also think once a PM gets a lot of clients the quality of service goes down. I've seen this with realtors we've worked with in the past. All for growing, but treat everyone the same. We we deal with tenants, we treat the section 8 tenant the same way as a regular tenant. Everyone deserves respect.
- Real Estate Broker · Cody, WY · Member since 2010 · 28k+ posts · 41k+ votes5y
Congratulations! I'm a property manager with 400 rentals and get responses like that all the time. Yes, there are bad managers out there. But for every story I hear about a bad property manager, I probably hear at least one story about a bad private Landlord that doesn't know the law, doesn't obey the law, isn't honest, doesn't maintain the property, keeps the deposit when they shouldn't, yadda, yadda, yadda.
There's good and bad on the professional side and on the DIY side.
The DIY Landlord Book4.7243 Reviews
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