All Forum Posts by: Keith Jablonowski

"What we think is funny is the owners that actually believe PMCs that charge for maintenance by the hour do NOT charge a markup!
They fail to understand the PMC's hourly rate has a built-in markup for profit."

Not only that, they have a maintenance team that they need to keep busy with work, so there just might be some extra stuff that pops up, that never would have with a PMC that uses vendors.  

There is no perfect solution for the PMC or the Owner.  Maintenance cost will continue to rise, it will continue to be hard to find reliable, fairly priced vendors and keep them, it seems like it will only get harder to hire and keep good maintenance techs also.    

I agree with all of your points on why we should charge a markup.    We charge a percent with a ceiling per work order.  We negotiated a quarterly ceiling with a few owners as well.   Dealing with Vendors is extremely time consuming and our customers are benefiting from all of the hard work we have put in establishing a network of reliable vendors.   

If you have an owner balking, offer to reduce their management fee if they  handle all vendor requests.   They would come running back to you with their tail between their legs in no time after they made 100 texts and phone calls to get a few bids and then have the vendor not show up, lol.  This is reality until you can establish reliable vendors.  Or pay outrageous prices to the big names.  

Where are you located?  Sounds like  you need to fire that property manager and find a good property manager who can handle this property correctly.

There is not nearly enough information provided for anyone to tell you to keep or sell, but if you aren't willing to do the tough work to find the right PM or learn how to manage it yourself, then selling is probably the best option.   

I wouldn't advise leaving it there.  That leaves you liable if the tenant or guest injures themselves with it. 

Selling it to them is an option that lessens your risk but make sure write up a bill of sale, offer as-is and state that it is their responsibility to make sure the item is safe to use and to maintain it.   

Your best route though is to sell it to someone not associated with the property at all.  

A lot of people use Zelle, but I don't recommend it. It's secure, but doesn't give you control over payemts.   We use Rentvine.   Most PM softwares will also handle payments.  

With Zelle it's either on or off.  You can't turn it off for a single tenant who you don't want to accept payments for.  You can't set it to only accept payment in full.  These both are an issue if you need to evict someone. Every time you accept a partial payment from them it delays when you can file. 

What does your screening process say?  Ours says the 1st application to qualify get's the lease offer.  No deciding between multiple prospects which can lead to claims of discrimination.   

As others have said have a screening process (in writing) and follow it to the letter.   

Need to reach out to the current PM and get started collecting this information.

You have a few options.  

1) Hire a local Realtor to do a lease only.  It costs you around 1 month's rent but they would handle everything.

2) Sign up with a company like Showdigs that you just pay by the showing.  They recruit and train local RE Agents to do showings as needed.

3) Setup a Sentrilock or Codebox and do Self Showings.   I would still want a local realtor or manager to have eyes on the property on a weekly basis though to make sure property is clean, safe and showing well.  

We offer tenants for a small charge the ability to have all of their rent payments reported.  We don't just do positive.  Knowing that their credit can take a hit if they are late is a little extra incentive to make sure they get that payment in on time.  So it helps them and it helps us and helps the owner.  Win, win, win is always the goal.  

If he is really trying and eventually pays in full every month and it is truly a timing issue with him getting paid you could consider changing the due date on his lease or accepting multiple payments throughout the month.   

But if he is just being difficult and he owes anything more than 30 days then don't mess around.  Serve the proper pay or quit notice for your state and if he doesn't pay start the eviction process.

But you need to enforce the late fees regardless.   You can give a 1 time get out of jail free card but after that if rent is due on the 1st and late on the 5th, then on the 6th the late fee get's added, do not budge on this.  If you do he knows he can work you.