All Forum Posts by: Alex Smith

Edgar,

Another PM here. Nathan and Jason covered the bases. What you're asking about is something that we also require of our owners. 

If we're doing a rehab on a house, we can list the house as pre-leasing and collect names for a waitlist, but we will not show the house to prospects. Once the house is ready to be shown, those individuals will receive an alert that they can go see the house. Like many have said above, don't show it unless it's ready to be shown. Put your best foot forward. 

Remus,

There are some good replies and feedback from others in here. 

The PM company I work for, gkhouses, manages a ton of rentals in and around the Birmingham area. Our founder, Matthew Whitaker, just wrote a blog post on Bigger Pockets about this exact question. Hope this helps. Birmingham is a great place!

https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/11663/82680-be...

PM here. 

Lots of good feedback and insight in this thread.

Zillow is a great source for leads, and it's widely accepted that that is the case. It's very strange they would say otherwise. 

I could see them using the old photos in the interim time period between when they're being installed and when they are actually installed but that doesn't sound like it was the case. Why would you not want to put your best foot forward?

Cameron,

This is a good question. Working for a PM company, it's easier for us to find separation. We keep communication mostly to email (so things are in writing) and the rest on the phone. Ultimately, it's a decision that you'll have to make for yourself and how you want to run your business. My recommendation would be to keep the communication to an app. That way when you start building a team and maybe have someone running the PM side of things (or you just want to get away for a week) that person can start running things relatively quickly and without much confusion because they'll have access to past communications, and the app can be run from anywhere, as opposed to YOUR phone that can only be used if you're around. 

Outside of working hours we generally wait until the next business day to respond to tenants unless it is an emergency. 

I hope this helps. 

I would check with a company that does screening if you don't want to deal with screening/interpreting credit reports. Not sure where you/your rentals are located, but some that we've used in the past (we do screening 100% in house now) are:

Cromwell; Birmingham, AL

Resolve Partners; Greensboro, NC

We see ~70% of potential renters wanting to rent with at least one pet. Like John, we do not rent to what our insurance company considers aggressive dog breeds. We also charge a $300 non refundable pet fee

I'm interested in the answer to this as well. It seems like there is some lead time that's required for a listing to show up as new if it's been previously posted. In my experience, if I remove a listing and repost it the next day, two days or even a week later, neither the DOM or position of the listing changes. 

It depends on what their lease says is included. On our leases, all utilities and lawn care are tenant responsibility unless the owner or a HOA say otherwise. If the latter is the case then we modify the lease to say what's included.

Thomas S. covered pretty much everything. For leases that we have with tenants, leases automatically go M2M after 12 months, and either party (owner or tenant) is able to give a 30 day notice at any time.