Landlord FAQs: Find the Answers You Need

The greatest benefit we offer our owner clients is peace of mind. Managing their own investment property is usually difficult for owners because they often become personally and emotionally involved with their tenants. We view tenant relationships only as business relationships. We employ sound business practices with little emotional involvement to more efficiently manage your property.

Our property managers are well-informed about landlord/tenant law, and they stay current on changes in the law by attending management classes and meetings on a regular basis. Our managers have solved thousands of landlord/tenant problems, and by virtue of our many years of experience, we can make better management decisions.

Your peace of mind is realized when you turn your investment property over to our trusted professionals, and you are suddenly relieved of the management hassles. The benefit gained is a small price to pay. Besides, we can often find the means of either increasing income or cutting expenses to offset the management costs by improving your property's cash flow.

We fill vacancies very quickly, usually within one or two weeks after they are placed on the market. We are able to fill these vacancies with no advertising costs to the owners. We employ a wide range of strategies to expose your property to prospective tenants. We distribute hundreds of copies of our rental list each week (with your property on it). We advertise your property on the internet, our website, and social media sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Craigslist. But the best source of prospective tenants is the many current and past tenants who have come to appreciate our quality service.

The industry standard for a professional property manager is to require each applicant to have a minimum income of 2.5 times the monthly rent of the unit of your property and they have no evictions on their record. We use a Tenant Screening Company to check the background of each applicant applying for your property. The applicant's financial history, rental history, and employment history. We may also drive by the current address of the applicant to see how well they are taking care of their residence. Finally, we evaluate the recommendations of the Tenant Screening Company before the final approval decision is made. The end result is that only the best-qualified tenants are allowed to rent your property. We have very few evictions because of the thoroughness of our screening process.

The better the condition of a property, the better quality tenant it will attract. Property that shows well rents faster and commands higher rent. We recommend the interior be painted or at least touched up, the windows furnished, floors, fixtures, and appliances be cleaned, and any needed repairs be made. Once the property is put in good order, we require (through our rental agreement) the property to be maintained in good order so future turnover costs to the owner are minimized.

We recommend a security deposit be collected in the amount approximately equal to the rent. We usually ask for $50.00 less than the rent, so there is never confusion about the security deposit being last month's rent. If you decide to allow pets, we recommend an additional $500.00 security deposit per pet.

We allow a five-day grace period for late rent. Rent is always due on the first of each month and considered late after the fifth. If a tenant is late, we post them with proper notice to pay within 3 days. If they do not pay, we immediately turn their file over to an attorney. Rarely are we forced to take this last step. A recorded eviction now shows up on the tenant's credit report, and most tenants do not want their credit ruined.

We do a complete inspection when the tenant moves out, and we take pictures and videos of any damage. We deduct from the security deposit the costs of repairs. If repair costs exceed the amount of the security deposit, we can usually recover these costs through small claims action. We seldom experience damage to our properties because we screen each tenant thoroughly before we rent to them.

We collect the tenant's rent and deposit it into a trust account. After we pay bills and other expenses, we mail the balance of the rent money to you with a check from your trust account. We can also pay owner draws via electronic transfers.

The tenants are asked to call us or fill out an online maintenance request when they have a maintenance problem. It is common for us to visit the unit ourselves and assess the situation. Once we deem it is a legitimate concern, we contact the tradesman we have used on a regular basis to do the repair, or you can provide us with the names of the tradesman you would like us to use. We will contact you regarding repair costs that exceed an agreed amount.