5-Star Review Skepticism: Old-Fashioned Way Best to Find Good People?
My skepticism of customer reviews has been growing for some time. I think customer reviews started out well and became very useful to find good people, but have been spiraling down for years for a variety of reasons.
I believe the first reason lies in the sheer ubiquity of customer review requests. If I talk to any person on the phone, I’m getting some combination of e-mail, text, and personal plea for a 5-star review. And it is not just once in a while; it is becoming part of most business interactions. It’s a job put on me by companies and they make me feel guilty if I don’t comply, and comply positively. The volume of reviews has watered-down legitimate performance feedback.
Another reason is how the on-line review system has been gamed. Corporations hire “review help” companies to improve their on-line reviews. They send out surveys to every person that does business with the corporation and then turns the positive, 5-star reviews into “official”, posted reviews. The less positive reviews get scrapped. This has made reviews less and less reliable.
Many reviews border on fantasyland. The 1,000 positive reviews with one company with only a handful of negative reviews? How is that even possible? People tend to be negative! Everyone is so overwhelmingly overjoyed with an overwhelming number of companies? People don’t generally seem that effusively happy to me…
Or how about companies that arbitrate between two parties with competing interests? It would be like reviewing a judge (or a property manager with their landlord and tenant clients!). If a guilty verdict was given, the prosecutor would be giving the judge 5-stars and the defense would be giving the judge 1-star. That makes sense. Now is it possible that both parties think justice was done and might positively review the judge? Sure, it’s possible. But 1,000 times? No one is that good!
If there is one scoop of ice cream left and my oldest son and daughter both want it, how would I always get a great review from both of them? One is going to love me and the other is going to be upset. I figure to get 5 stars from my daughter and 1 star from my son (or vice-versa). Doesn’t that make sense?
So… if on-line reviews are trending to be less and less reliable, where do Charlotte landlords find good people to work on their homes? We are all in need of them!
In the old days, people in need of a service would ask a friend. “Who mows your lawn? Are you happy with them?” There are certain friends everyone has that they know are up-to-date on certain things. They tend to give out the 5-star referrals!
In property management, the same goes for finding excellent vendors and tenants. I’ve always had success when asking our favorite vendors if they could recommend good people in other industries. And when great tenants recommend their friends who are moving into town, I’m almost positive they will be good tenants too before even running their applications. Good, reliable people tend to congregate with people like themselves.
Are on-line reviews useless now? No, but I think they are getting there. I’d argue they need to be taken as a piece of information and handled with a healthy degree of skepticism. I think it is better to focus more on the comments than the star count.
Smart landlords realize that while newer search methods for good people can be moderately useful, old-fashioned methods can be more dependably 5-star worthy.
Happy Landlording!
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Purpose of Upside-Down Nametags and Fewer Rental Home Photos
Early in my business career, I attended a networking event at a local restaurant. I went to the sign-in table and was enthusiastically greeted by Susie. “Welcome! What’s your name?”
As Susie found my name on the sign-in sheet, she dutifully checked a box and pointed me to a nearby table with white sticker nametags and black Sharpie markers on top. “Write your name, your business name, and go meet some great people!” Then she quickly repeated the same spiel to the fellow behind me.
I did what I was told and uncomfortably started to mill around the room while simultaneously straining to read the other attendees’ nametags around me.
Me: “Hi, Jim. I’m Brett. What do you do for Hillman’s Autobody?”
Jim: “I fix cars. What does ‘BDF’ stand for? Oh, that’s really interesting…”
It was painful for me, as it was for Jim. As I moved on in the room, I saw a slightly overweight, middle-aged man standing by himself against a far wall with his nametag on upside-down. I went over to him and then unwittingly stepped into his trap.
“Excuse me… Joel?” I tried to awkwardly read his name by crooking my neck. “Your nametag is on upside-down. I just wanted you to know.”
“Oh, thanks! What a klutz I am, Brett!”, he appreciatingly said while reading my nametag. He then unstuck his nametag and put it on correctly.
“But do you know what else is klutzy? Not having life insurance, Brett! Let me tell you about it.”
And that was the opening that of his 10-minute monologue. He was very concerned that my grief-stricken family members would potentially being stuck paying for my funeral costs (thousands of dollars!) and what a stain that would be for my deceased self’s legacy.
When the conversation came to its merciful conclusion, I politely excused myself and headed to the exit. When I got to my car, I realized I had forgotten my coat and backtracked back to the restaurant. I retrieved my coat from its hook and was on my way out when I saw Joel standing by himself again… with his nametag on upside-down.
Wait a minute…
So I fell for Joel’s little ruse. I definitely felt duped. But, to Joel’s credit, he knew why he was there and what he was trying to do. Sales is a numbers game. His purpose was to talk to enough people and expect that one would be in the market for life insurance. The right conversation with the right person would lead to a sale.
In the rental home game, landlords are trying to find qualified tenants to apply for and rent their homes as quickly as possible. So, they set the bait in the form of on-line rental ads.
Prospective renters visit these on-line rental home websites with the purpose of finding the best home for their needs. To do so, they add some filters to the search criteria (cost, # of bedrooms, size, area, etc.), look through these narrowed down rental home listings, and then click through the details of specific homes to find a few finalists. Then they schedule times to see these top choices in person before applying for them.
In my mind, the purpose of rental ads is to be one of the homes that is visited in person, not just a home clicked on thousands of times. The more in person visits, the more chance that a home will be applied for and rented. Most people do not want to keep visiting rental homes without picking one. If a landlord can create intrigue with the promise of a renter finding their “diamond-in-the-rough” property, this intrigue can generate more visits.
So how does a landlord create intrigue? One way is to use fewer photos. As the saying goes, “you don’t know what you don’t know”. It may seem helpful to prospective renters to be able to narrow down properties by seeing 50 photos and a virtual tour, but landlords shouldn’t want their properties to be narrowed down and eliminated from consideration. If only 8-10 great photos are posted, it can create a taste of a property that can only be sated by a home visit. More photos can actually bring up more reasons to cross a rental home off a list, especially in light of hundreds of available homes to choose from.
The purpose of Joel’s upside-down nametag was to start conversations to ultimately generate life insurance sales. Smart landlords remember that the purpose of landlord rental ads is to generate home visits to induce rental applications.
Happy Landlording!
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Trump Versus Institutional Homebuyers: Opportunity for “Landlords on Purpose”?
“Every adversity, every failure, every heartbreak, carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”
(Napolean Hill)
In recent news, President Trump is working on banning institutional homebuyers (firms owning 1,000 or more residential homes) from buying more homes. These institutional buyers (IB’s), like Progress Residential, Invitation Homes, American Homes 4 Rent, and others, own about 3% of the homes in America.
The Trump administration rationale is that IB’s with unlimited checkbooks are outbidding families for the same homes which makes achieving the American dream of homeownership harder for regular citizens. IB’s are typically vultures in the market eagerly trying to buy affordable homes (around $200-400K in Charlotte), so there is truth in that. After they buy them, they usually fix them up (laminate wood flooring, new paint, new stainless-steel appliances, etc.) and make them higher-priced rental homes. Then instead of a family owning a home, the family is paying high rent to an IB.
The picture painted above of an IB is not a glamorous one! IB’s would tell the story a little differently than the Trump administration. They would say that they provide liquidity for the home sales market as a motivated buyer; this helps American families move on to buy other houses or cash out on their real estate investments. They would say they fix up houses that are in disrepair and introduce new, needed rental homes to the market for American families to live in. They are an instrumental partner in keeping American housing stock current and from neighborhoods incurring decay from dilapidated and abandoned homes.
As someone who regularly sells homes in this price range, I like dealing with the IB’s. They always pay cash, don’t quibble with repairs, and close on time. They are in the business of accumulating homes that fit their investment profile and they are good at it. The agents who work for them are cordial and non-emotional; they don’t hold a grudge when we reject their offer initially and they are still willing to make a deal months later if we call them out of the blue. Their offers are not usually outlandishly low; some are actually above what we expected to get from a non-IB buyer. They are a nice option for sellers to have!
In short, I think IB’s are both bad and good. But I don’t make the rules! I just try to work my best within them for our landlords, their rental homes, and the tenants.
If IB’s are banned, there will be fewer rental homes available. And in Charlotte at least, we need more rental homes for the influx of 157 people a day that are moving into our metro-area. Where will they come from? The Trump administration says they expect the void to be filled by Mom & Pop investors (aka you and me).
So here is the opportunity. I saw a statistic the other day that said that 51.5% of all US mortgages are below 4%. I also saw (and have experienced) that the home sales market has been relatively stagnant for the past 3 years. Many people believe the past low mortgage rates are causing the slow market. This has been labeled as the “lock-in effect” where sellers don’t want to lose their low interest rate to buy a house with a much higher interest rate. Their great past interest rate is “locking” them into their existing house. That makes sense to me.
Reviewing the information below:
IB’s being banned or curtailed would create fewer rental homes (less supply)
Strong rental home demand continues as experts say that not enough homes have been built and there is undersupply (strong demand)
Previously bought homes with sub-4% mortgages can cashflow better than buying investment homes now at higher interest rates (lower monthly cost)
Buying a new home in a buyer’s market is favorable (lower prices, more negotiation room, & less competition)
Real estate is considered a great investment that adds portfolio diversity while hedging against inflation
I would conclude (drumroll please), it might be a great time for smart investors to rent out their “locked-in” rate house and buy a new one to live in! There are families ready to rent them.
As opposed to an “Accidental Landlord” who is forced to turn a non-selling home into a rental, a “Landlord on Purpose” could be a profitable way to ride today’s market trends.
Happy Landlording!
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A Pair Should Beat a Full House? Reassessing Security Deposit Wear Guidelines
“Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean…”
(Proverbs 14:4)
I remember several years back we had a couple come in and apply to rent a home from us. They had eight children and seemed abnormally well-rested and together. I was an admirer of these parents who were gracefully taking care of business with almost three times the youth constituency I’m currently trying to navigate. Warriors!
This was going to be a full house! Fair housing laws prohibit any type of discrimination based on family size, so the sheer number of inhabitants wasn’t a factor on their application decision. But common sense dictated that a house with ten people was going to have more wear than a house with two. And wear on a house costs landlords money.
In rental home poker math, a pair should beat a full house. Less occupants means there is less potential for things to break and be worn down. Avoiding and accounting for wear has come more to the forefront as repair and renovation costs have skyrocketed post-COVID.
I started to think about the wear assumption while I was out in the field doing interior home inspections earlier this month. I hadn’t done this many personally since pre-COVID and things were different this time around! I visited around 25 rental homes during business hours and was shocked that 85% of the homes had people present. Schools were in session and it was not a holiday of any sort. I thought most people would be working outside of the home. This was not the case.
The last time I was out doing inspections, almost all of the homes were vacant when I stopped in; the process was sort of robotic and boring. This time it was nice to be able to see some of our tenants and talk. But it was unexpected. And it made me think of how much more foot traffic these houses take now than then.
Wear is probably less of a function of how many people are in a house, but how many hours people are in a house actively using it. So if ten people are living in a house but travel for work and school most of the week, there is not going to be much wear. But if these ten people never leave the house, the wear rate would be very high.
When calculating wear expenses for deduction from a tenant security deposit, property managers will use general guidelines for the life of new carpet or paint (typically 7-10 years); these guidelines have been around for a long time. But if adult tenants are not leaving their homes during work hours, should these numbers be adjusted downward (6-9 years)? Rental homes are incurring a higher rate of wear after COVID jolted the work system and it’s not cheap to renovate.
Wear rate will never be an exact science! I remember doing the walk-through after the aforementioned ten-person family vacated after several years of occupancy. The home looked better than it did when they moved in. Go figure.
But, generally-speaking, wear has increased in rental houses post-COVID. Smart landlords will reassess their security deposit deduction guidelines periodically as wear has become an even larger expense driver.
Happy Landlording!
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A Thanksgiving Rental Home Vendor Question: “What Do You Even Do???”
Property managers have a lot of things under their purview. Different types of things break or need to be serviced on a rental home. Most are handled by specialists in some regard who know how to work within the confines of what landlords require (no gold-plated toilets, please). And sometimes it can be tough to find specialists who are a good fit.
One of the vendors that has historically been a difficult find for BDF Realty is a good, reliable lawn company. When the service area is as large as the Charlotte-Metro area, it’s understandable that not every company works everywhere we have rental homes; it’s tough to justify driving 20 minutes to mow one stray lawn! Then properties are constantly in flux (vacant ones need to be mowed and rented ones don’t, and this changes constantly); this can be administratively difficult to keep straight as their weekly routes need to be constantly updated due to our needs. Not being able to work due to rainy days adds another wrinkle of difficulty to keeping yards look consistently good. Finding one, let alone several, companies that can accommodate us has been challenging. Then they need to be reasonably priced, reliable, friendly, have sound accounting to boot!
In my quest I stumbled on to a lawn company and met with the owner. He was a nice guy, easy to talk to. He ran a smaller shop and thought he could help us out. We started to send him our properties.
Shortly after, I noticed that I stopped hearing from him except when he acknowledged he received our house changes and sent us invoices. Occasionally, he would let me know he saw something askew at a house that we might want to check out. But for the most part, he went dark on BDF Realty.
But the yards were always mowed! We stopped getting calls from tenants and agents complaining about overgrown lawns that hadn’t been cut for weeks. The bills showed up on time and accurately. We weren’t paying for lawns that were still on the schedule when they had previously been taken off the master list. The landscaping part of the business seemed to be quietly humming along.
If I hadn’t been in the business of trying to find good lawn companies for so long, I might have thought something was wrong. “Why don’t I hear from this guy? Why do we pay him so much money? Should I be pitting another lawn company against him? What does he even do that’s so special?” But experience and age gave me appreciation on what a gift this peace of mind was. He really kept us clean from a lawn service perspective. I appreciated it!
From a Charlotte property management perspective, this is what we aim for. We want to be like our lawn service provider, keeping all of our clients clean. The question of “What do you even do?” is one I hope every client has. That usually means that the rent comes in every month, tenant leases are regularly extended, house turns are smooth, tenants are calm and satisfied, and the property management side of the business is quietly humming along. When it looks easy from the outside, it’s running as designed.
Speaking of… A special “Thanksgiving” shoutout to our vendors who do such tireless, great work every day for our tenants, clients, and us. I could ask the question, but I know what you do!
And a thank you, as always, to our clients- if it weren’t for you, there would be no BDF Realty.
Happy Thanksgiving & Happy Landlording!
Learn MoreBeing a Duke Hoops Recruit & Landlording: YDKWYDK
As much as I hate to admit it (being a UNC guy), Duke University is a worthy rival on the basketball court. A big part of that is their ability to recruit great high school players. They go after the best of them and have been very successful in landing them in Durham. Many of them were so good that they only played one year at Duke and then left early to play in the NBA for millions of dollars.
But, for others, it didn’t work out that way.
Point guard Derryck Thornton was one of those Duke recruits. He was an esteemed 5-star recruit who was finishing his junior year of high school in 2015. Duke was thin at point guard for the upcoming season and they convinced Thornton to “reclassify”; this allowed him to graduate early from high school and join the Blue Devils for the 2015 season.
It was a great honor. The defending national champions needed him to come early and play. He was only 17 years old! So he said “yes”, enrolled at Duke early, and was starting at point guard. It seemed like he had the world at his fingertips!
But, YDKWYDK (You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know). A year later (when he originally should have been starting school at Duke), Thornton was transferring out to play basketball for the USC Trojans. It was allegedly a combination of factors he could not have seen coming: his freshman year didn’t go as well as they had hoped, certain Duke players inexplicably didn’t go pro (that would have made more playing time available to him), and other more heralded recruits joined the 2016 team. He went from being really needed to being really expendable. So he was gone.
YDKWYDK. By definition, it’s hard to protect yourself against the unknown. This is especially true in property management when there are so many variables; renters (people) are complicated and they are all so different! It’s best to have someone who might know what you don’t know because they’ve been there before. Experience counts!
I know I’m biased towards using a property manager, but I understand the self-management side of it as well; I’m all for saving money! It’s cheaper if I fix the sink, as opposed to my plumber, but what about if I miss something and it causes a leak behind my wall? Then I’ve got a bigger, much costlier problem. YDKWYDK
And if property management is merely a hobby, it’s really tough to know what decisions can be costly down the road:
“My friend/co-worker wants to rent the property. He seems like a good guy. Should I rent it to him?”
“Should I allow any pets in my rental home? If so, which ones are okay?”
“Is it important to do credit checks? If their score is low/high, is that an instant denial/approval?”
“Do I need to do home inspections? If so, what am I checking for?”
If Thornton had been told in 2015 that he would be transferring to another college after his freshman year at Duke, he probably would have had a good laugh. But it happened. The same can be said of many decisions being made today by landlords who dabble in property management; the unforeseen long-term costs of seemingly innocuous choices might make the expense of having a property manager seem very reasonable!
YDKWYDK. Happy Landlording!
Brett Furniss is a property manager at BDF Realty (Charlotte Residential Property Management), the trusted real estate advisor for Charlotte landlords & Home of $100 Flat Fee Property Management. BDF Realty utilizes their innovative Pod System for exceptional customer service in residential property management, home repairs, and home sales for single-family homes, Uptown condos, and town homes in the Charlotte-Metro Area. Contact Us Today!
Learn MoreWesley Snipes’ IRS Case for Rental Home Inspections
Wesley Snipes is a great actor. Watching him in White Men Can’t Jump, Major League, and other films is some good theater.
But Wesley got some bad advice at tax time in the late 90’s. His accountants told him there was a loophole that would allow him to avoid $7M in taxes; in fact, he didn’t even have to file tax returns. He thought that sounded pretty good. And besides, everybody knows the IRS isn’t really paying close attention with the sheer amount of returns they have to log every year.
Well, the IRS was paying attention. And they got Wesley’s attention with a 3-year prison sentence that ended in 2013.
It was sad for everyone: his many fans, his accountants (who received even stiffer jail sentences), the IRS who had to use limited resources to prosecute his case, and especially for Wesley (who had reputedly earned over $40M from 1999-2004).
There were a lot of questions in Wesley’s case, but one almost undeniable certainty- Wesley’s tax returns now are the most truthful and timely documents he files every year.
This logic spills over into residential property management and periodic home inspections. If landlords can show tenants that they are paying attention to what is going on in the house and whether maintenance is being done, they will undoubtedly get a better conditioned house when the tenant eventually vacates.
So, yes, this means going over to and inside the rental house. I’d highly recommend giving the tenant a week or so notice of when the home inspection is and letting them know what you are specifically planning on looking at (e-mailing them a list is helpful).
Q. What should a landlord include in their home inspections?
A. Anything they care about.
Some general things I care about:
- Do the keys still work?
- Is the lawn and landscaping being kept up?
- Are the air filters being changed?
- Are the fire and CO detectors still there on each level of the house and are they functional (aka is the tenant changing the batteries when they die?)
- Is the home clean?
- Does it smell like smoke?
- Is there evidence of a pet if there isn’t supposed to be one?
- Does anything look weird?
Feel free to add anything else of interest. I also think conducting the home inspections twice a year (roughly on month 3 and month 9 of the lease) works well. Paying attention is good, stalking is bad.
Wesley has some well-maintained tax returns now and periodic home inspections should lead to some well-maintained rental homes.
Happy Landlording!
Brett Furniss is a property manager at BDF Realty (Charlotte Residential Property Management), the trusted real estate advisor for Charlotte landlords & Home of $100 Flat Fee Property Management. BDF Realty utilizes their innovative Pod System for exceptional customer service in residential property management, home repairs, and home sales for single-family homes, Uptown condos, and town homes in the Charlotte-Metro Area. Contact Us Today!
Learn MoreRental Lessons Learned from Britney Spears’s Management Team
On New Years Day 2004, Britney Spears’s management team was just waking up to a wonderful, wonderful, and more superbly wonderful morning. They had one of the hottest singers on the planet, she was making them tons of money, and her momentum was strong.
Everyone was happy and content.
Or should I say everyone with the exception of Britney, but she had enacted a quick plan to change that.
In the spur of the moment, she flew her childhood friend, Jason Alexander (not the rich one from Seinfeld), from Louisiana to Nevada. Then after a night of partying, she proposed they get married. Jason was down and they found one of those quickie Las Vegas chapels to hitch them up. They were now married and well on to their way to marital bliss. They just had to break the news to their families, and Britney to her management team.
I imagine Britney’s conversation with her management team went something like this:
Britney: I married Jason Alexander last night! It was…
Management Team (interrupting): The one from Seinfeld?
Britney (laughing): No! Let me tell you the story! Jason looked me in the eye and I knew it was meant to be and we drove right to the chapel and…
Management Team (interrupting): Whoa! Hold on. I think you skipped the most important part of the story, the part where you stopped by an attorney’s office and had a prenup drawn up before you made it to the chapel, right? Right????
Britney (pausing): Not ‘zactly. You’re sort of killing my buzz right now.
Britney’s management team started formulating the equation in their minds:
Short term courtship + booze + no prenuptial agreement + gross income equality (gazillions versus $20.00) + contractual lifetime commitment = Britney financial disaster and the eventual termination of our employment
This didn’t add up well for them.
Property managers are often put in similar situations with rental applications. Potential tenants walk into a rental home and fall in love with it. The owners are anxious to have it occupied. It’s a boozy, quick courtship that seems destined to consummate. Is it a match made in Heaven?
Maybe. But an experienced (property) management team can step in and start asking the tough questions about the tenants before anything is signed:
How much money do they make?
Did you see they have 2 monthly car and student loan payments as well?
What happened with that past eviction?
Isn’t the tenant’s dog uninsurable because it’s an aggressive breed?
A tenant that seemed like a good idea at the time may become less desirable under more vetting. To avoid something like the Jason Alexander nuptials, it’s usually better to have some unattached, impartial party give some input on important coupling decisions before tying the knot.
While Britney’s management team was able to forge an annulment and put down the marriage in less than 55 hours, it can actually take a few months to part ways with a less than ideal tenant. So make sure the vetting is done before anyone gets too excited!
Happy Landlording!
Brett Furniss is a property manager at BDF Realty (Charlotte Residential Property Management), the trusted real estate advisor for Charlotte landlords & Home of $100 Flat Fee Property Management. BDF Realty utilizes their innovative Pod System for exceptional customer service in residential property management, home repairs, and home sales for single-family homes, Uptown condos, and town homes in the Charlotte-Metro Area. Contact Us Today!
Learn MoreReplace the Butter with Margarine and Nix the Washer & Dryer Please
Americans demand to have their food made-to-order. We no longer live in a culture where you eat what’s put in front of you; rather if you don’t like an ingredient and would prefer to have other ingredients instead, it is deemed socially acceptable to make the food preparer bend to your individual whims. Burger King based a multi-million dollar advertising campaign on (and trademarked the phrase) “Have It Your Way,” and now every restaurant does the same. I feel for the workers in the restaurant industry who have to put up with all of us creating our own menus.
I read an article about how the French chefs despise American tourists even more now. We walk into their 5-star restaurants, look at the menus (which we expect to be written in English), and have conversations like this:
American Tourist: How’s the escargot?
French Waiter: Magnifique!
Tourist: What are the snails cooked in?
Waiter: Excusez-moi?
Tourist: I mean, I’m trying to cut down on butter, so I’d prefer the chef uses low-fat margarine… butter is bad for the heart, you know. And garlic gives me gas, so let’s cut that out too if it’s in there… Try to keep the salt to a minimum. And were these snails bred and treated humanely before bring cooked?
Waiter: Sacre bleu!
This thinking has permeated into real estate as well. At BDF Realty, we were selling a house for one of our Charlotte property management clients. An investor came on to the scene who loved the house and wrote a contract to buy it. It was a great offer and we wound up accepting it with minimal negotiation. However, the investor did have one demand that caught me off guard and was not negotiable- the washer & dryer needed to be out before closing.
Now, if the washer & dryer were on their last legs, I’d understand. But our client had bought these about a year ago; it was a nice set that worked perfectly. But the investor was adamant that they needed to go. So, it made me ponder: why wouldn’t the investor want these as an asset for his future tenants?
I thought about the prospective Charlotte tenants who contact us to rent our houses. Not many of them ask about a washer & dryer. I don’t think we’ve ever had a deal fall through because a house didn’t have them. We’ve had conversations with prospective tenants about the issue of moving the washer & dryer that was already in the house so they could use their own that they were bringing (that’s a pain!). And having a washer & dryer in the house didn’t allow us to charge more rent.
Furthermore, I recall the repair requests we get from tenants who have washer & dryers our owners provide. We send out appliance repair people that, at times, have cost our owners hundreds of dollars. Sometimes the washer & dryers are not repairable and have to be replaced which costs our owners even more money and drains their ROI.
So, if tenants don’t act like they want washers & dryers and it costs our owners money to have and maintain them, maybe this investor was on to something? He makes a compelling case to get washer & dryers out of rental homes and let the tenants fend for themselves.
Maybe it is smart to “have it your way” when you’re buying. Experts do say that too much butter is bad for the heart!
Happy Landlording!
Brett Furniss is the head property manager of BDF Realty (Charlotte Residential Property Management), the trusted real estate advisor for Charlotte landlords & Home of $100 Flat Fee Property Management. BDF Realty utilizes their innovative Pod System for exceptional customer service in residential property management, home repairs, and home sales for single-family homes, Uptown condos, and town homes in the Charlotte-Metro Area. Contact Us Today!
Learn MoreLong Term Real Estate Planning is (Politically) Correct!
If you knew you were running for president someday, you’d probably do many things differently. You may rethink all your controversial letters to the Charlotte Observer loudly demeaning the local politicians (those idiots!!); you may need their help someday campaigning on your behalf. That Election Day when you were in the throes of a “House of Cards” marathon, scarfing down Jet’s Pizza, and didn’t quite feel like driving to the polls? Better get up, wipe the sauce of your mouth, punch your chad, and make it look like you care about the political process! The video your friend made of you acting like a fool with the pool boy on that cruise a few years back? Better make sure that doesn’t find its way to Facebook because Glenn Beck will have a field day with it during the primaries.
This whole accountability thing can be scary! But if you know what you want to do in the future, you can plot your moves (and non-moves) and optimize your future plans.
Real estate works the same way and requires taking a long term planning view. What do you want your real estate to accomplish for you? And over what time period?
From being a Charlotte property manager for over a decade, we’ve had clients who have had many differing reasons why they are holding real estate. We try to put together a strategy to cater to these needs individually. Here are a few examples:
- “I have a house that I don’t have enough equity to sell right now. I want to rent it out until the market turns up again.”
With that in mind, we want to minimize fix-up costs (touch-up paint & carpet steam clean when turning over the property between tenants) before we see the market improve. Once it does, we’ll look to replace the carpet and give the home a full paint job to sell at the top of the market.
2. “These houses are my retirement. I want to keep them forever and live off the residual income.”
We’d look to find long-term tenants on the private market (multi-year lease only) or Section 8 tenants (who now, after 18 months of vacancy in one house, cannot move until they leave the program). We’d also look to more actively make optional repairs to maximize the enjoyment of the tenant.
3. “I want to have the option to stay in or get out depending on market conditions!”
We’ll keep you apprised of the market sales and rental prices 60-75 days prior to the current lease expiration. Then you can let us know which way you want to go, rental or sale. We’ll also let you know when an opportunity comes up when one of our investors is looking to buy an investment home with a tenant already in place to create a win-win for both of you.
The best way to get the outcome you want tomorrow is to wisely plot your moves (and non-moves) today. There are very few people who are politically incorrect, like Donald Trump, to whom this (apparently) doesn’t apply! But, in real estate, long term planning will save you both time and money.
Happy Landlording!
Brett Furniss is the head property manager of BDF Realty (Charlotte Residential Property Management), the trusted real estate advisor for Charlotte landlords & Home of $100 Flat Fee Property Management. BDF Realty utilizes their innovative Pod System for exceptional customer service in residential property management, home repairs, and home sales for single-family homes, Uptown condos, and town homes in the Charlotte-Metro Area. Contact Us Today!
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