Door kicked in while your property's vacant? Great time to hire a professional property manager!

Hi, Lindsey:  Thank you for stopping by, and for your comment.  Exactly my point.  Does a property manager stop any and all problems that might pop up?  Of course not.  But a "watched" property is much less likely to end up like this than one that's not watched- or not watched closely enough.  I managed 500 properties in the Birmingham area, and the companies I've worked with here in Orlando have managed a combined 1,200 or so.  I can count all of the properties I've ever had end up like this- and still have some fingers and all of my toes to spare!  Oddly enough, I think the most chronic issue I've ever had would be the case where some folks directly across the street from a vacant place of mine would sit on their front porch and use my place's bay windows for target practice.  Far from neighborly, I can tell you...

Hi, Rob:  Thank you for stopping by and for your comment.  Merry Christmas to you and yours!

As you surely know, A/C thefts have risen and fallen over the years.  Copper was cheap, then went through the roof, then back down again- not exactly sure where it sits right now.  I've had a number of them stolen over the years, though.

In Birmingham, my broker owned 61 of the 500+ properties we managed- and not all were in the best of areas.  We had one place where the thugs stole the place's outside unit twice in one week...if it wasn't so costly, that'd be pretty dang funny.  I ended up telling my A/C guy that we weren't gonna put A/C unit #3 in there until the night before a new tenant moved in.

I had a crazy one down here about a year and 1/2 ago:  I had folks move out late on a Thursday, and I inspected on a Friday morning around 10.  The following Monday, I got a call from the folks across the street.  The guy told me that an hour or so after I left, he watched 2 guys steal both A/C units from my place and carry them off on bicycles...

The guys went into the back yard and had the luxury of a 6-foot solid wooden fence for cover as they cut the outside unit away and all, then went through a window and down the hall to steal the inside unit from the garage.  Ridiculous.  More ridiculous was Mr. Observant calling me 72 hours after the thugs had long pedalled away.