Learn why property owners will list with you in this letter from an owner
Owning a 32 unit apartment complex in South Florida while living and working in North Carolina has been challenging for the past several years. Probably the best indicator of the size of the challenge is the number of property managers we’ve employed – five in less than five years.
Having run a manufacturing business for over 15 years you could always tell how the business was performing simply by walking through the plant. Unfortunately, we lacked this sort of feed back with our apartments. At best, we have visited the complex once every year or two and were able to see interiors of only a few vacant units during those visits. Out of sight – out of mind became our operating model and that approach has taken a terrible toll on the both the condition of the building itself and the tenant base.
After an exhaustive search of professional property managers in the area, my partners and I elected to give total responsibility to Todd and Home Property Management for turning our property around. HPM offered several unique management tools that their competitors did not. As a result of our previous errors, we had learned not to assume “all was well” with the condition of the property based on conversations with the property manager. For this reason we were especially motivated by the property videos that HPM offered. We now receive timely emailed links to videos of every vacated apartment, every freshly renovated apartment as well as videos of landscaping/exterior changes made or proposed. It’s as close as you can get to being on site and seeing it with your own eyes.
I’m certain these videos are a powerful tool for Todd or any other property manager as well. It has always been too easy for me to dismiss a description of a problem as an “exaggeration”. It’s far more difficult to hide from a problem when it’s clearly framed in a video. Videos also make it easier for my partners and I to get on the same page together on an issue too. As the managing partner I no longer have to rely on my ability to “sell” the others on an issue. The video says it much more clearly than I could ever describe it.
Kevin McKenzie, North Carolina April, 2010
