PROPERTY MANAGEMENT BLOG

Before, when my husband and I managed our property ourselves, we allowed pets. One tenant paid on time for eight years and then when he moved…my little girls, who hung out with daddy while he fixed it back up, coined it the stinky house. Yep, I don’t think the poor dog ever went outside and we had to replace all the carpet an...

Hi I’m Jessica Farrar with SOTO Property Solutions. Today I’m talking to all you do-it-yourselfers out there. Maybe you do it yourself to save money or because you like the control. I’m talking about professional services. Let’s look at a few instances where you may be better off to not do it yourself.Ok so wh...

When doing an analysis on a property, one of the things you should account for is a reserve fund. Our clients allow us to hold a reserve in their account for them. Actually we require it. It’s a relatively small amount but it’s enough to cover most any expense that comes up after we distribute their funds to them every month. But...

We have this little office pool going where you guess when the postage meter has to be refilled. Who ever guesses the correct date, wins. When we first started this, you just won bragging rights and you just had to get the closest to the date. We changed it to you have to pick the exact date and you would win money. If nobody guessed corr...

This past weekend, I was scheduled to show a foreclosed property that one of my clients was looking to buy. I arrived about 15 minutes early and was walking through the property when someone knocked at the door. It was a neighbor who was a little curious about what was going on with the house because it had been vacant for so long. He gav...

One of my favorite TV shows is Pawn Stars. If you don’t know it, it’s a reality show of a pawn shop in Las Vegas. It shows people coming in trying to pawn or sell items that they either bought from somewhere obscure or was left to them by a late relative. On occasion, someone will bring an item that they have no idea of its value. The...

We face this a lot. We market every property the same way, but some rent right away while others stay on the market for a long time. When a property stays vacant for a while, I get owners calling me asking me why we don’t have their property rented as if we’re not doing our job. I let them know that we’ve been showing their property...

One of the things a lot of landlords fail to realize or refuse to accept is that the security deposit belongs to the tenant. The landlord may be holding it, but it still belongs to the tenant. As a professional property manager and regulated by the state of Missouri, I’m required to hold the security deposit in a separate bank account. ...

The other night I was at a social event. I ran into someone that I’ve met before but don’t know well. He informed me that he was one of my competitors. I knew that he didn’t hold a real estate license so I asked him how so? He let me know that he owned rental property and he self managed. Well that’s not really a competitor, but I...

I recently read an article about how to keep tenant turnover low. One of the suggestions was to not raise a tenants rent. The author commented that tenants do not understand that taxes go up or insurance goes up therefore won’t understand why rents go up. I for one am in complete disagreement with this concept. Everyone in this busi...