As a rental property owner, you need to set realistic expectations for how your property manager will take care of your property. When we talk to new clients, they often tell us they aren’t happy with their current manager or they had a bad experience previously or they don’t know what to do because their tenants are causing problems. We ask a very direct question about what their expectations are.
Relationship Building – Owners
Understanding and meeting expectations is crucial to the relationship between an Orlando property manager and an owner. If your expectations are unrealistic or illegal, we are setting ourselves up for a bad relationship. Remember that as your property manager, we need to enforce the lease legally. So if you expect us to do something that isn’t legal, we aren’t going to be able to deliver what you want. We need to discuss what we can expect from each other.
We want your tenant to stay in your property and pay rent on time every month. There are ups and downs in every rental cycle. There might be repairs or tenant problems. All of these things are fixable, but they are fixable with two open minds. If you have unrealistic expectations because of what you want or because of what is illegal to include in a lease, it can create conflict between the property manager and the rental property owner.
Relationship Building – Tenants
It’s important that the owner and property manager work together. As professional property managers, we represent the owner, so we enforce the lease with your interests in mind. However, the tenant is in the property and paying rent, and that means we have to enforce the lease accordingly. We need tenant assistance to grant us access to the property, help us coordinate repairs, give us notices and return funds. To get what we need from the tenant, we have to keep our expectations realistic.
Communication and Questions
We encourage owners to ask as many questions as possible. Ask questions about our tenant screening process so we can tell you what the next course of action will be. Ask us about our maintenance plans so we can tell you how long a repair will take. The more you know, the better an owner you’ll be. We have been managing for a long time and we can explain to you what the process is, how long it may take and the likely outcome of any tenant’s course of action.
So when we talk to you the first, time, we’ll ask if you have worked with a property manager before and if so, what are your expectations. It’s important we get off to the right start. We don’t want to make false promises we can’t honor and we don’t want to make false promises a tenant can’t honor.
We’d be delighted to speak to any rental property owner who isn’t sure what their expectations are. If we can answer questions for you and help you understand what to expect, pleases contact us at Warner Quinlan.
Mark Pagdin
President/Broker Warner Quinlan, Inc.
For more than 20 years, Mark has managed his and clients’ investment portfolios, garnering him the unique perspective as both owner and property manager. His blog series is an invaluable tool for investors looking for guidance on property management, purchases and acquisitions.
