Looking back on some of the early costly mistakes we made I truly believe we could have saved thousands of dollars had we carefully selected the right property manager in the beginning. There are two reasons for this:

1. The reality of paying a mortgage on a vacant property was so real that we were overly anxious to rent out our vacant properties. This, combined with the fact my wife and I considered ourselves as good judges of character caused us to quickly approve some applicants without carefully screening them. Also, we simply didn’t have convenient access to credit, criminal and eviction reports and we were not skilled in knowing what ‘red flags’ to look for and avoid when screening tenants. This resulted in us having to evict a few marginal tenants. This was costly. It was also costly to spend hours of our time talking with, negotiating with and sometimes arguing with them before the eviction.

2. It is often more difficult for an owner/manager to maintain the right relationship of accountability with a tenant. Last year a property owner hired us to manage a home he had leased out to an acquaintance from his church. The owner is a capable and compassionate person and when the tenant fell on hard times the owner agreed to some rent concessions and agreed to trade the tenant’s labor for part of the rent payment as well. Eventually, several misunderstandings between the two parties left the owner feeling he had given several months in ‘free’ rent to the tenant and the tenant felt he had put in enough work to the house to justify the concessions. After we were hired, a full rent payment became due on the 1st of the month with no concessions and improvements to the house were made by outside vendors and only when necessary. The first couple months were rocky but after the tenants learned we were going to service the lease exactly as written they began paying the full rent on time every month.

There are many stories of owner/managers losing money due to their generosity, their haste to rent the property quickly, or their lack of knowledge and tools to enforce the lease terms when the situation calls for it.

For instance, an experienced rental agent may negotiate an early lease termination with the tenant and, with the property owner’s agreement, offer not to pursue collections or an eviction if they can leave the property quickly and in a clean and damage-free condition.

It is important that the rental agent follow eviction protocol even when negotiating a better resolution. The eviction process takes time. Not sending out the proper 3 or 5 day notices because the parties are in negotiations can ultimately hurt the property owner. It is best for the rental agent to march along with an eviction at the same time they try to ‘broker’ a less costly alternative.