In July, I received an e-mail from a property owner whose daughter had just graduated from UVa Med school and who was leaving the area and he wanted to keep the townhouse as an investment. I arranged to meet with the daughter, view the unit and I gave a realistic rent estimate with the caveat that the rent needed to be reduced sooner rather than later because of the late time of the year.....After sending him my management proposal and management agreement, I got his e-mail that he had decided on another property manager. When I realized who he went with, I knew his only criteria was their lower management fee.
The townhouse has now been vacant for over a month and having started out at a very AGGRESSIVE rental rate, it is now down to the rent I quoted in July. Their property manager does not have a national website presence and has a canned "sales" website that she features her rental property on. She has posted a half-hearted listing on our area Craigslist every week or so and does not have the CL presence that most area professional PMs have (I post daily on a rotation between my HERO listing HTML and postlet).
This is a REALLY good example of penny wise and pound foolish.....feel free to quote my exprience when you receive those dialing-for-dollars phone calls from prospects. If they are ONLY making their selection on the mgmt fee quoted, they are leaving DOLLARS on the table with lost rent, utility/upkeep carrying costs.
Comments(6)