Property Management Blog

Legal Documents

One of the most important reasons to hire a professional to manage your properties is the importance of the various legal documents associated with it. Everyone is familiar with leases (although few individual landlords have a good lease form), but there is actually a lot more do...

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Roommates and Security Deposits

Something that comes up pretty regularly, especially in college communities, is how you’re supposed to deal with a security deposit when there are non-married roommates listed on the same lease. It’s important to deal with this correctly, otherwise you could end up wi...

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ALWAYS screen. No exceptions.

Sometimes a tenant prospect comes along who tries to avoid the usual screening process, and there is some sort of circumstance that tempts you to accept his or her request. Perhaps the tenant is offering to pay six months’ rent up front, or perhaps you’ve been waiting...

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Reviewing the lease with the tenant

One of the most important things that can be done to ensure compliance with the lease is to review it in detail with the tenant(s). It’s hard to believe for many property owners, but most tenants will just sign the lease without bothering to read any of it. For those who do...

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Who pays the sales commission?

Just about every brokerage includes a clause in their property management agreement that deals with a situation where the owner sells the property to the tenant. While this happens only rarely, owners are usually interested in how this would work, and it’s a common question...

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When a tenant abandons the property

Thankfully this is a rarity if you are using a reputable management company like us that screens tenants thoroughly, but it’s impossible to completely avoid. Sometimes there will be a tenant who abandons a property mid-lease. It usually happens after the tenant loses his jo...

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Illegal Eviction

Although our eviction rate is less than half the national average, we do occasionally have to evict a tenant. When this happens, the property owner sometimes gets upset at the fact that we have to follow a legal process that can take 1-3 months, depending on which county the hous...

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Why is it taking longer to rent my house?

Many owners of rental property have friends who also own rental property, and they sometimes wonder why it’s taking longer to rent their house than it did their friend’s. There could be many reasons, including the condition of the house, the neighborhood, the conditio...

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The Terrorist Watch List and rental property

Most people have heard of “the terrorist watch list,” and most people associate it with preventing potential terrorists from boarding airplanes. But the list is used for a lot of reasons beyond that, including tenant screening, and has actually been around since way b...

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How our blogging helps our clients

Sometimes we get asked why we devote time to writing blog entries for our website. Obviously, it does take time, and time is valuable, so why spend it on a blog? Several reasons.First, we think there is a lot of valuable information that we can give property owners through our bl...

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