By Timothy Phillips – Aletho Wireless Solutions
As a property manager, you are a business, and tenants are your customers! Although the term isn’t commonly used, the meaning is true. Your job, of course, is to keep your customers happy so they don’t move out. You have other customers too, of course – the property owner – and although there is sometimes a push and pull between the needs of the two, the end goals are really aligned: happy tenants who stay!
Five Ideas to Help Turn Late Payers into Gold
By: Nick Frantz
Every month, whether I have a balance or not, I get an email reminding me that my credit card payment is due in 10 days. I’ve never been late with a payment, so initially I wondered, “Why did they send this?” When I recognized that it was part of a proactive strategy to ensure on-time payment, I understood.
On a list of traits that make up the ideal tenant, “pays on time, every time” has to be right up there at the top. These tenants are gold. But there will always be tenants who are habitually late payers. And dealing with tenants who cross the line from late to delinquent can be costly and tough to resolve.
Provided by On-Site.com | written by Philip Christian
When it comes to selecting a resident screening service, there’s no shortage of choices. One way asset managers can whittle down their choices is to evaluate screening providers based on the quality of their search data. At a minimum, a national or multi-state criminal and landlord/tenant court record search provider should offer the following:
1) All-inclusive search coverage
2) I.D. reality checks
3) Built-in compliance
As with all of life’s responsibilities there are only so many hours a day in the lives of property managers and owners. Yet all of us are bombarded with email, text messages and loads of social media opportunities like Facebook and LinkedIn. Our clients and residents all want to communicate with us as well. The only way to effectively manage the information in your life is to begin by prioritizing what you should devote time to and what you should either delegate or delete. To manage information while you’re managing a business one has to begin by making critical decisions and sticking with them.
RepairClinic.com, America’s most popular online store with replacement parts for appliances and outdoor power equipment, today shared a list of the top three most overlooked home appliance dangers and tips on how families can protect themselves.
“People often forget about dangers associated with major home appliances because they’re as much a part of daily life as a toothbrush,” said Chris Hall, president of RepairClinic. com and appliance repair expert. “It’s important to be aware of these dangers and to take proper care to reduce risks and stay safe.”
By: Naomi Nicholson ARM, MG Properties
When cutting cost, reducing expenses it is important to keep in mind the result these actions will have on both your bottom line and how it will affect the quality of life for your residents. Doing this in today’s economy climate can be challenging. During the last decade, our industry changed dramatically. Amenities and perks given away 10 years ago are now part of premium rental packages with costs passed on to the resident. Today, we look for ways to save money and lower cost without jeopardizing the asset or the residents that live there. It’s ok and even expected to be charged for these amenities. To increase income try charging for water, parking, pets and appliances, which can be considered a rentable item especially if they are a washer and dryers within the unit.
By: Neil Fjellestad & Chris De Marco
Rental ownership has a long history of satisfying the primary investment priorities of personal financial independence: safety of capital, inflation hedge and tax-favored income. Traditionally, if the detailed financial statements of the wealthy are available for review it becomes apparent that long-term income producing real estate assets directly or indirectly contribute substantially to their net worth.
Certainly there are exceptions that get the notoriety. There are the entrepreneurs that hit the jackpot with a new invention, the right innovation at the right time and/or the market control of a needed commodity. Then there are the speculators that successfully capture the benefits of leveraged capital, cheap labor or some windfall in the short-term that cannot be repeated with consistency.
However, forget the outliers and the top one-percent and concentrate on the basics of what has worked for the top twenty-percent. Locally understood and available rental properties purchased carefully one at a time consistently becomes the safest real asset to own. Note that a small share in a national real estate investment trust may seem like a “safe way to get the benefits of real estate ownership” but in fact, this is just another financial asset with the same characteristics and historically similar results as any other stock market investment.
By Jack Nooren
Judging by the reports recently published in the local media, San Diego’s real estate market continues to be neck-deep in turmoil. With home values still adjusting to the new market conditions, and a large numbers of homes still in foreclosure, the county is likely to face a shortage of apartments by August 2012.
Approximately 13,000 apartment buildings dot the skyline of San Diego, but currently just less than 130 apartment buildings are up for sale. Due to the shortage of saleable properties, cap rates have been compressed, fetching owners a higher value. It is the other extreme though when it comes to commercial sectors such as retail, office and industrial. Here, cap rates and vacancy rates remain at the highest peak while values continue to decline.
Source: Costar
By Ronald R. Reitz, CPA
When and why should a property owner contact a Public Adjuster?
You should consider contacting a Pubic Adjuster as soon as you suffer a loss. The insured has certain policy conditions that must be strictly adhered to. These conditions are detailed in the policy and they will vary by the type of policy i.e. commercial versus residential versus manuscript. You may start off at a disadvantage if you wait until your insurance company has begun the adjusting process and you may discover you have not met certain policy conditions or missed deadlines.
I believe it is the insured’s responsibility to determine the value of their claim and it can be a cumbersome process gathering bids from various contractors while you are reading your insurance policy and trying to understand what it means. Insurance policies are very complex documents and are not very easy to understand, many of them have certain limits that increase or decrease depending on the total amount of your losses – and each coverage area can be different. Perhaps you simply do not have sufficient time to document and determine the full value of your claim. Some people try to handle the adjustment process on their own, and quickly learn there are not enough hours in the day to gather all information required to prove your claim.
By Kim Hopkins
When you are looking for an electrician, look for someone whom you can form a long term relationship with. It’s going to save you a lot of time and also save your company money if you can find someone whom you trust and who will become part of your maintenance team.
Find Recommended Electricians
You can get recommendations for electricians from other apartment managers and also from homeowners. You can also search on-line for electrician Los Angeles or electrician Anaheim, and so on. If you add the word reviews to your search, you can look for companies that have the best reviews.
Another approach is to search websites that feature reviews. Reviews appear on many websites including Google Places, Yelp.com, AngiesList.com, and CitySearch.com. You may be familiar with AngiesList.com, a paid service. It’s an excellent source of recommendations for contractors. It asks customers to rate contractors, including electricians, and give specifics about how their job went.