Yarmmys Vargas is with us and we’re talking about rental property maintenance. Her previous experience is with apartment and multifamily properties, but she is currently our Orlando Operations Support Group Team Manager. She oversees maintenance requests and lease up services. Today, she’s helping us understand how to deal with rental property maintenance requests. You need a process that is orderly and strategic to help ensures things don’t go haywire.

Residential Property Maintenance: Act Fast

Two words are important when it comes to maintenance requests – “Act Fast.” We act fast by always having a great selection of pre-screened and approved vendors to go to for help. They can be trusted to go to the properties and service our maintenance issues. Once a tenant emails us with a problem, our system allows us to send it right to our vendors. Then, they have the knowledge and also the training and expertise in place to help us make the process go smoothly. They make a phone call to the tenant within 24 hours. Our goal is to get all maintenance requests resolved within 2 or 3 days, depending on the severity of the issue. We email the tenant and inform them which vendor we have chosen, and we instruct them to contact us if they don’t hear from the vendor within 24 hours. If that occurs, we’ll assign another vendor. Working quickly will help with due diligence and keep your tenants satisfied.

Residential Property Maintenance: Follow Up

“Follow Up” is one of the more important aspects of dealing with maintenance requests. We establish communication and ensure the job was done. We follow up with tenants and make sure the issue is not a problem anymore, and we follow up with vendors to ensure that they invoice us in the way we require invoices to be sent. It’s important that you don’t wait to hear back from the tenant. Be proactive and reach out to the tenant to ensure everything is resolved appropriately.
That’s all we have time for today, but if you have any questions about rental property maintenance or Orlando property management, please contact us at All County Property Management.

Kathi Thomas is our special guest today, and she is a licensed Realtor, a seasoned Property Manager, and a professional with prior years of experience in the Title industry. We’ve asked her to shed some light on a topic that’s important to many of the owners we work with: concerns for out of state owners and even owners who are out of the country. Kathi is going to highlight the top 5 concerns a property investor like that might have.

Planning the Money

The first concern for a real estate investor outside of the state is always the money. ROI is important, and part of our job is to create a Return on Investment for our owners. The obvious expenses right away are the mortgage and insurance. Then, there are always other expenses that are not so obvious, like HOA fees. So we have to make sure that an owner is prepared for everything. We want to discuss long term property goals and whether the owner will keep the property as an investment or retire to Florida and live in it someday.

Local Expertise

For a rental investment to be successful, someone must have knowledge of the local area. Owners expect us to guide them through the local rental market. We have to know what is renting for how much money, and where the subsets of various markets may be.

Local Laws

To avoid rental problems, a good property manager will understand local laws. An out of state owner is not going to know the Florida Landlord and Tenant Laws. As a professional management company, our owners can rely on us to know these laws and to track the changes. This helps us to mitigate risk. We watch for notices and security claims and we know how to navigate through those legal issues.

Finding Qualified Tenants

Most problems with rental property can be attributed to bad tenants. We make sure we’re placing good tenants who are not only able to pay rent but are stable. We conduct a full background check, and that doesn’t include only the criminal check. We collect a good overall picture of a tenant’s stability and ability to pay the rent. The lifeline of any rental investment is income production through a hihigh-qualityenant.

Maintenance Costs

The maintenance costs are not a fixed item. Owners, especially new investors, don’t always consider the costs of maintaining an investment property. So we help our investors understand that there are some unknowns. We do our best to maintain a property and implement preventative maintenance measures to keep costs down. It’s important for out of state investors to ask if there are mark-ups on maintenance work or if savings are passed on to the property owner.

The bottom line is the bottom line. There are a lot more things that out of state investors are concerned with, but these are the top five. If you have any questions or need any help with property management in Orlando, FL, please contact us at All County Property Management.

As with many areas in the United States, rental demand continues to climb in the Winter Park, Florida area. The latest data from the Federal Reserve suggests that now is a great time to be a property owner. During the last three months of 2015, the property owner’s rental income added up to about 4.3 percent of the U.S. national income. Meanwhile, key takeaways from the “Emerging Trends in Real Estate” report published by the Urban Land Institute and pwc has us looking forward to successful investments for properly managed rental assets. You can download and read the full report here.

It is important to be aware of changes to real property law and contract law. Perhaps what is more valuable is to have a lease reviewed by a lawyer who specializes in landlord/tenant law. Our management professionals always make use of a carefully worded Orlando, Florida lease agreement, which has been reviewed by an attorney.

Recently, major changes have been made to landlord/tenant law in places like California, Wisconsin and other parts of the country, which has social media all abuzz. In an effort to equalize the position of property owners and their tenants, landlord/tenant law is constantly evolving and landlord’s rights and landlord’s responsibilities in Orlando and elsewhere are constantly changing. For instance, prior to March of 2015 landlords in Wisconsin were obligated to make arrangements for storage of any personal property that belonged to an evicted tenant. To fulfill such an obligation, landlords in that area needed to notify the sheriff’s department, hire a bonded mover, and give notice to the evicted tenant. The revised law now allows a landlord to presume that property left behind and to deem it abandoned. There are exceptions to the rule, of course, and this is just one example of how estate law can and has evolved in places around the country.

The lessons that we can take from trending news topics like those out of Wisconsin make it clear that your property manager’s role goes way beyond simply filling unoccupied space. At All County CFL Property Management, we can proudly say that our expertise in lease execution and lease enforcement will help to protect your property investments for years to come.

In order to keep in line with the ever changing rules, our Orlando, Florida lease agreements are regularly updated. A well written lease will allow your property manager to enforce lease requirements, and in the case of an escalated issue, a well written lease could mean the difference between winning or losing a court case. At All County CFL Property Management, our leases are well written and tenants’ responsibilities are clearly defined. Orlando property owners that hire All County CFL Property Management can rest easy knowing that a qualified property manager is acting in your best interests, busy protecting your Orlando property investment.

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