Sometimes A Client Of Your Property Management Company Is Just Too Tough!
As an owner of a Gibsonton Property Management company, I deal with all sorts of owners/clients. They can range from the frustrating to serene and everything in between. The most difficult challenge in owning a property management company is dealing with owner complaints and requests. As a Gibsonton Property Manager, we are far from perfect and make mistakes all the time.
There are so many balls that we are juggling that dropping a few here and there is normal. My personal mission is developing my own software database to help us drop far less than our competition, but that is a story for another day. Today or tomorrow, I’ll be letting go a client with an incredible rental home. The home rents for $2500 a month and in a lovely location, but the owner is killing us.
Typically, I can figure out a way to get clients like this to relax after we find a tenant. However, this client just renovated this home and has a lot of issues with it that need to be addressed. It looks lovely, but there is a flooding situation in the backyard, sewage backup, special landscape needs, and the owner has been managing several other properties on this own. When I have an owner that manages himself and lives locally, I typically start to worry.
My fear is they will be second guessing every decision. 7 times out of 10, I can still work with them, but the remaining 3 typically fire us. There used to dealing with their rental properties a certain way. They decided to hire us because it was too frustrating and took up a lot of time, but 3 out of 10 can’t let go.
The most rare situation is an extremely detailed owner that used to manage the property him or herself, lives locally, and doesn’t want us quit, but constantly hammers us with questions. This is the reality of what I’m dealing with now. It’s been 3 months and we are just worn out from the non-stop barrage of questions. I’ve been hanging on because normally once we get the tenant in we’re good.
I’m writing this article for property managers who wrestle with this problem. I think it is okay to occasionally stop working with a client once or twice a year. I do this in a professional way and there are no hard feelings. At the end of the day, we are property managers to make a profit. If you can’t see any clear path to that objective with a specific client, it is reasonable to part ways, provided you weren’t the cause of the problems.