Independent Rental Owners (IROs) Jim Stewart, Brent Sobol, Mike Butler and Dan Lieberman offered rental housing owner/operators more than 60 management strategies in rapid-fire format during the 90-minute session “Owner/Operator/Manager Best Practices: 60 Great Tips” held at the 2011 NAA Education Conference & Exposition in June in Las Vegas. Following are selected comments and ideas of interest:
• Be sure to fix “the little things” quickly. If the resident has a sticking closet door, they have to deal with it every day. Although that’s a little thing, if it sticks for weeks, that might end up being the thing that compels them to move out.
• When we screen residents, we check with their previous two owners. After all, if they aren’t good residents, their current owner probably won’t tell you that, because they want them gone.
• We pay our maintenance techs $10 for every pet they find living in a unit on the property that is not listed on the lease. Then, we get that pet on the lease (and charge a monthly fee).
• If they live locally, we conduct unannounced housekeeping checks on applicants to test their “cleanliness” level before we accept them. We have one of our staff knock on the door of their current residence. We judge the visit by asking, “If the person answering the door made you a bologna sandwich right then and there, would you eat it? Second, that staff member having looked inside, we ask, “Would you be willing to go in their residence right there and be willing to clean the place up if they moved out?”
• Instead of concessions, we offer Rent Bucks. These bucks can be worth a given amount of real dollars (say, $600). The resident can then use them however they wish toward paying their rent. Some choose to use $50 per month, and others spend all $600 one month. It’s their choice.
• We mail $20 to any of our residents who use their real names and addresses on positive, online apartment ratings posts.
To purchase a CD-ROM that includes the full audio for this and all NAA Education Conference sessions, visit www.prolibraries.com/naa.