Have you ever been a tenant?

Sanj, I thought you are married as your photo shows a traditional Indian groom's wedding gifts of gold around the neck. I love the ceremony where relatives and friends adorns the bride and groom with thick gold chains. The more gold hung around the neck, the more valuable you are

 

I've rented a few times during the past few years. It has reinforced that I am a reasonable landlord. In the last place we rented, the hot water system wouldn't work and the landlord came to the property himself to try to fix it. In the end we had 6 days without hot water. Luckily we hadn't settled on our home yet so we were taking the kids back there for baths. He also would not replace the lock on the gate as he deemed it unnecessary. it was the type of gate that wouldn't stay closed without the lock operating which was just fab with a toddler.

in other places I've been stung for carpet cleaning or additional cleaning costs. I learned quickly that I needed to use an agency-approved cleaning service so if the job wasn't up to the landlord or PM's standard it was up to them to sort out.

 

Very interesting results! I suppose its not unexpected... the majority of respondents have said they have been both a landlord and a tenant.

I can say we haven't had a single sole willing to say they haven't moved out of home as yet...

That's all good!

 

My experience from renting and land-lording is, as a general rule, Property Managers on a wage/salary (i.e not having an ownership/interest in the business) are underpaid. I think a better pay structure for PM's would help recruit and retain higher quality PM's.

 

People who see a PM role as a stepping stone to to sales (where they perceive the big bucks to be), are generally really really crappy PM's.

I've found that PM and Sales to have very different sales traits.
Good PM's have a goal to be lazy - by that i mean they work really hard to find a good tenant, with the view that a good tenant is less hassle for them, thus giving them time to be lazy.
Bad PM's are just lazy and will do least amount of work required, these also become the crappy agents we all love to buy from, because all they care about is the sale.

 

Part of this is all the fee negotiating (and undercutting) people try to do.
$400 per week x 7.7 = $30.80
$400 per week x 6.6 = $26.40, or about 15% drop in gross revenue which probably flows through to PM wages since other costs are fixed (office lease, software subscriptions, yadda yadda)

Great post. There's generally 3 types : those who are using it as a stepping stone to sales, those who have worked their way up from the reception desk or those who deliberately want to be where they are. The latter are generally best. Having some experience with investing can help as well.