3 Signs That Your Property Manager isn’t Good
From a landlord’s perspective, a good property manager should find reliable tenants, collect rent, ensure lease agreements are being met, and provide vendors for maintenance requests. Additionally, they should be conducting annual inspections to make sure the unit is being properly maintained.
Well, that is why we at Hoffman Realty have put together this three part blog series to help you determine if your current property manager just isn’t getting the job done. In the last four to five years, we have never seen so many complaints from landlords about their property managers.
We’ve compiled the top three reason landlords tell us, they’re unhappy with their property manager or why they’ve fired their current residential manager.
3 Reasons Landlords are unhappy with their property manager
- The property manager won’t return phone calls
- The property manager gets their accounting is consistently incorrect, or
- The property manager is unable to get cash flow from the property
In part two, we will discuss the accounting issue and what can happen if you choose to ignore it. Amongst the top three complaints, unreliable accounting is the number two issue. After all, if they can’t get your accounting right, how can you trust them with your money?
Think about it this way, if you had a bank and they sent you a statement every month that was inaccurate, you would fire them. However, for some reason when it comes to landlords it seems a lot choose to put up with the situation for years. Most of the time, the landlord chooses to ignore the issue because they either like the property manager or they didn’t want to create a negative situation.
However, by going down this route you can put yourself in a potentially worse situation. Here are three stories we’ve heard in the last month from landlords who’ve faced accounting issues with their property manager and the shocking outcomes they’ve suffered:
- A couple of weeks ago, a landlord called and said their property manager could not give them an income and expense statement for last year. Worse than that, the property manager couldn’t even give them a 1099. This not only made it difficult for the landlord to complete their taxes, but could have potentially put their head on the block with the IRS.
- Another owner called recently and complained they had never received their owner-draw. When they called their property manager, the manager couldn’t account for it. What’s that about? There’s no excuse for it.
- Just a couple of days ago, a landlord from California with three properties in Tampa called and said their property manager took off with their tenant’s security deposit. They described that over the last two years the accounting gradually got less accurate to the point it became non-existent. They had chosen at the time to put up with this and look what happened.
Ultimately, property managers have a responsibility to take care of the owner and their rental.
Don’t ever allow your property manager to skate by because you never know what can happen. If your property manager can’t get your accounting right, get another manager. Find a Tampa residential manager who wants to take care of you, not take advantage of you.
Contact us or give us a call if we can answer any questions at (813) 875-7474.
How Do You Know Your Property Manager is No Good? 3 Signs to Watch Out
Part 1: Property manager won’t return phone calls
Part 2: Property manager gets the owner’s accounting consistently incorrect
Part 3: Property manager is unable to get any cash flow out of the owner’s property