21 May 2007 No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

When you own rental property, your property manager can make you or break you. Your return on investment is directly correlated with the performance and dedication of your property manager. This leads to my rant. My parents own a multi family property in Oakland, CA. I basically run all of their finances and real estate and because I’m still in school, I decided to hire a property manager two years ago when I sold my parents the property. I have absolutely no idea why I am paying this company, who is a self proclaimed property management company who, dare they say it, specializes in turning around problem properties. They can’t even manage a great property if you handed it to them on a silver platter, let alone a problem property.

I got hit by the city with an invoice for $2450 because a lien has been placed on the property due to violation of building codes (garbage and overgrown plants) and nothing was done about it. I pay this property management company about $200 a month and in addition to that fee they subcontracted other people to haul away garbage and clean up which runs about $150 a month. So why in the world is this place messy? Aside from just this, the company has absolutely no idea how to handle rent collections. The tenants are behind on rent and I have to keep emailing the manager to go follow up with the tenants and whatnot.

Whats the point? If I have to keep pushing the manager and following up with him, I might as well just bypass him and manage the property and tenants myself. This is just ridiculous. Its summer now and I have some free time so I’ve decided that this property manager has got to go. I’m going to turn this property around. I’ll be posting the progress and I’ll be doing a write-up on picking good property managers after I do some extensive research.