All Things Property Management

By Colin McCarthy, J.D., Robinson & Wood, San Jose, CA From time to time, a property owner or possessor will give permission to others to use or rent out parts of her property and put things on it. A soda machine, a vending machine, a gas line, or even a pipe trestle. Those who use that land in this manner have a duty of care to third parties to prevent injury. The same duty that the possessor has. Here is a fun fact pattern. The land possessor runs a horse farm. He rents out horses to be ridden on the property. A customer asks for a mild horse. The land possessor gives the customer what he believes to be a mild horse. The customer takes said horse out for a ride. Said horse is not mild. Said horse goes where it wants to go and takes the customer along with him. Injury ensues: "Plaintiff and his wife rode under the trestle along the indicated road, with plaintiff's horse in the lead. After proceeding about 400 feet to the north at a walk, plaintiff turned his head to the left and called to his wife. As he made this movement, plaintiff's horse suddenly reeled about to the left and began racing back on the road toward the trestle, gaining speed as it went. Plaintiff attempted in vain to control or stop the horse by pulling back on the reins as hard as he could with both hands, but the horse kept going...

By Linda Day Harrison, theBrokerList, Chicago, IL Whether you like it or not, online marketing is here to stay. Don't think that tomorrow you'll wake up and not have to deal with it or worry about it, like a fad. No such luck. Burying your head in the sand and hoping that it'll go away is not likely to help either. So what is a person to do who doesn't want to do anything, but deep down they know there are some minimum things they should be doing for the “greater good” of their company and future generations of that company? Well, my first rule of thumb is to advise the person in charge of the company to protect the brand. Okay, so what on earth does that mean? What it means is to get your name secured in the top online marketing platforms out there, and if you don't have a domain or blog, get the name registered as well. What sites am I referring to? The major sites include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. All of these sites offer customized URL links and, depending on your business, there may be others as well. Again, you ask, what does that mean? It means these labels or URL links are a pattern of letters or numbers or whatever your name is composed of. If someone else in another geography, company, or industry has a similar name, they may beat you to it, so grab it now. For instance, if your...

By Colin McCarthy, J.D., Robinson & Wood, San Jose, CA "The childish propensity to intermeddle was the characteristic which the [property possessor] should have taken reasonable precautions to guard against."* Sometimes the courts come up with lyrical gems that get right to the heart of the matter. Through pages and pages of drivel, more often than not there is one pithy sentence which sums up the whole case and rule. I often wonder why the esteemed appellate justices do not just give us the facts of the case and the one pithy sentence. The books would be a lot smaller and cases a lot clearer.** The above quote comes from a case which held both a tenant and the janitor the tenant retained liable for personal injuries to a three-year-old. The proof was that the tenant was in charge of a school. The tenant also, in the same building, housed families. (It was a hotel, and the tenant was the United States Navy). The tenant retained a janitorial service to clean said school on the weekends. Said janitorial service did so. Sometimes, they would stack the furniture -- desks and chairs -- in a pile. (To make cleaning the floor easier?) One weekend, a child was present in the school. Not a stretch, considering the building also contained living quarters. He climbed up on the furniture pile and promptly fell out the window. From the fourth floor. The case had a lot to do with outdated and inapplicable classifications of the child...

A guest post by Sara Thompson, Gresham Sanitary Service, Gresham, Oregon You have probably seen these homes on TV, or maybe you’ve seen them in person. People known as “hoarders” compulsively accumulate any and all kinds of things in their homes until it is packed to the ceilings with their every possession. Hoarders usually have an inability to let go of unnecessary items and clean their environment. In some cases, hoarders' homes become dilapidated and dangerous. If you are managing such a property, this can present a serious problem, but with careful planning and consideration, your house can be habitable once again. Dealing With a Hoarding Problem People who become hoarders are in need of help, both with the situation at hand, and in terms of dealing with the disorder. Concerned family members and friends should have the hoarder examined by a doctor, and perhaps consult a therapist. Helping the hoarder also involves completely cleaning out and organizing the home. Piles of clutter can make a home unlivable, creating both safety and sanitation issues. Thus, it’s critical for the home to be cleaned and organized before more problems arise. Possible issues involve fire (due to blocked exits, and huge amounts of paper and flammable objects) as well as the danger of illness from unsanitary conditions in the kitchen and bathroom. Creating a Strategy People who are involved with a hoarding cleanup project need to develop a strategy for cleaning the home, as many hoarding situations can become overwhelming. The best strategy...

By Colin McCarthy, J.D., Robinson & Wood, San Jose, CA One of my practice areas is insurance coverage work. I represent people and help businesses work out issues with insurance companies regarding whether a particular lawsuit, loss, or claim is covered by insurance. For many people and businesses, insurance is a must and coverage is a matter of everyday life and business practice. Drive a car, get insurance. Own a home, get homeowners insurance. Run a business, purchase a CGL policy. Get business interruption coverage. A gray area is when we are not quite acting as a person or a business. We are volunteering. We are working selflessly for others. For the common good. Sometimes we are paid. Sometimes we are not. The soccer league, church council, and the HOA cannot get along without us. There are important decisions to be made for the soccer league, for the church, and for the condominium complex. But those decisions have implications! People are affected by them. People are denied permission to do things. The HOA must act if it has information. If the collective “it” of the HOA knows of a dangerous condition, act it must, as we know. But what if only some of the directors are aware of the dangerous conditions? What if that director or directors do nothing? And what if someone gets hurt? He gets sued! And he could, in California, be personally liable for not acting on that knowledge. Yes, personally liable, separate and apart from the HOA...

A guest post by Brooke McDonald, Apple Valley Property Management, Minnesota As we all know, outsourcing is a risk that can turn out to either be the best decision you ever made or the worst thought to ever cross your mind. When it comes to property management, you have to decide: Am I willing to put the care of my rental property into the hands of a stranger? Will the investment be worth it? The stereotyped and semi-popular sitcom Outsourced didn’t last long on NBC, but it aired long enough to remind Americans of a poignant truth: Any kind of outsourcing involves some kind of learning curve, frustration, and a little bit of humor. Thankfully, outsourcing your property management does not have to be as hairy as Todd Dempsy’s struggles to run his Indian call center, nor will it require working with an office on another continent (unless you hire a property management company in another country, which we don’t advise). No, local property management companies can, in fact, be an incredible benefit to you as a property owner, saving you time and money and providing real estate expertise that can protect you from legal trouble. When you think of the word “outsourcing” in terms of property management, get rid of the negative connotations you often hear. Retrain your mind to hear the word “outsource” in conjunction with “property management” and think smart, wise, and worth it. Outsourcing can be an outstanding decision Doing all the management yourself is a heck...

By Colin McCarthy, J.D., Robinson & Wood, San Jose, CA That's not the quote, is it? No that's right, it's not. The quote is "With great power comes great responsibility." Notwithstanding, we discussed the immunity provisions granted by the California Civil Code with respect to a volunteer director's conduct that might be considered a "tort." So what the legislature gives, it also gives duties. That's not the quote either. It's something about what the legislature gives it also takes away. My right hand does not know what the left is doing, either, by the way. But I digress. Are you still reading this? The same Article of the Act that provides immunity for such volunteer directors also sets forth affirmative duties that all HOAs must follow. They can give themselves "more stringent" duties, but at a minimum, they must: 1. review operating accounts quarterly; 2. review reconciliation accounts of association reserves; 3. quarterly review reserve revenue and expenses; 4. review account statements from financial institutions in which reserve funds are placed; and 5. every quarter review income and expenses for operations and reserve accounts. There is a subset of requirements regarding reserve accounts, in place to protect the maintenance of the complex and its maintenance areas. Who can sign checks, how much has to be in the reserve, what it can be used for. But there is another affirmative duty that dovetails into the theme of our last two blog entries and indeed, a lot of these entries regarding landlords in general....

By Steve Boudreault, Buildium, Boston, MA In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Captain Kirk and Doctor McCoy are found guilty of assassinating the Chancellor of the Klingon High Council and are sent to the penal colony known as Rura Penthe. Upon arrival, the administrator of the facility informs the arriving prisoners, "Work well, and you will be treated well. Work badly, and you will die." This sentiment, paraphrased and without the threat of death, is a guiding principle of property management. If tenants behave themselves and follow the rules, the property manager can make their tenancy a pleasant one. If not, things can get ugly very fast. There was a situation recently at a property in Virginia where the residents came close to rioting because of what they perceived to be shoddy property management. Management, for their part, claimed that the residents were disrespectful, slovenly, and constantly flouting the rules. So as a property manager, what do you do when a situation turns ugly? You've all got to live with one another, right? If you say it's them and they say it's you, how do you come to an amicable resolution? Here are a few tips. Document everything. If residents are accusing you of not performing your property management duties, be sure to have written documentation that states that you have been. And if, for example, residents are complaining about things not being repaired, photographic evidence of before and after can go a long way. Isolate the problem. It's very...

By Colin McCarthy, J.D., Robinson & Wood, San Jose, CA I like insurance law. Not many people do, but I do. But then again, I like heavy metal and not many people like that either. (Their loss. And my hearing loss. I digress). I like insurance law because it feels good to help policyholders obtain insurance coverage, and I am also rewarded when the insurance contract is upheld to enforce the mutual agreement of the parties -- insurance coverage is denied because there was no agreement to cover a particular loss. I work with both policyholders and insurance companies and I see both sides of the equation. Sometimes the law interjects to help or hinder the implications of the insurance contract in real-world situations, such as when a volunteer HOA director participates in negligent conduct that leads to an injury. In California, the Civil Code has some statutes that protect the volunteer director from the liability scenario we discussed last post. As a refresher, that director participated in conduct that was arguably negligent with respect to known criminal activity and ordered some lights installed in the common area removed. Later, someone got hurt and sued the HOA and that director for removing the lights and leading to a criminal assault. The director was a volunteer but nonetheless was potentially personally liable. Enacted a couple of years after that lawsuit, Civil Code §1365.7 provides some protection for similarly situated directors. That section provides immunity for a volunteer director of a residential HOA,...

A guest post by Joe Dawson, PrintingPeach.ca, Toronto, Ontario, Canada If you run your own property management company's website, you have likely heard of search engine optimization (SEO). One popular scheme that low-rent SEO companies use is to add blog comments or send unsolicited emails to website owners claiming that they can get your site hundreds or thousands more visitors every day by optimizing your page for search engines. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true ... So what is SEO and why does it matter to you? SEO determines how search engines categorize you in terms of what search terms are relevant to your page and how far up the list of search results you belong. The text clues on your page should let a search engine know that you belong in the search results when someone Googles "property management in Anytown." It should also specifically let the search engine know whether or not you belong on the page when someone searches for "condos to rent in Anytown" or "pet-friendly rentals in Anytown." Search engine programs called "spiders" scan the Internet constantly (they "crawl" all over the web, so they're "spiders"). When search engine spiders look at your site, they determine what you're all about. The spiders read all of the content on your site that they can, looking for groups of words that put you in the same category as other sites. If you have a lot of instances of the words "dog," "treats," and "chew toys,"...