Business Center

A guest post by Brian Davis, Ezlandlordforms.com, Moorestown, NJ

Building a strong relationship with a new tenant and protecting your real estate investment is of paramount importance when crafting a lease agreement.  There are a multitude of considerations at this juncture that are essential to understand.  Brian Davis, Vice President of EzlandlordForms.com, is a seasoned landlord and top expert on landlord-tenant relationships.  Here he offers his top tips for new landlords as a helpful tool for navigating lease creation and the ongoing considerations of managing a rental property.

1. Understand the Fair Housing Act and how it applies to your rental.  When advertising for a new tenant, it is critical that landlords and property managers understand and comply with the Fair Housing Act. The Fair Housing Act prohibits landlords from using any of the following criteria when evaluating potential tenants: race, color, national heritage, religion, gender, disability, and familial status. While that may sound simple on the surface, consider that stating in a rental listing “perfect for a single professional” is a violation of the Act (bias against familial status). Advertising only in your church’s newsletter discriminates by religion. What landlords can and should use to evaluate potential tenants is financial data, credit histories, and other background data.

By Ben Holubecki, STML Realty Group, Glen Ellyn, IL

Transfer policies are often a detail overlooked by landlords and property owners who own/manage multi-unit properties. A tenant requesting a move from one unit to another presents challenges and can add unnecessary and unexpected costs for property owners. Ignoring these requests or not addressing them properly can open landlords up to potential resentment from tenants and even legal liabilities if not properly documented.
There are a lot of reasons why a tenant might request a transfer to another unit within the same property and there are positive and negative impacts resulting from this type of request. The most common reasons for these requests in my experience are:

- Problems or issues with current neighbors
- Maintenance issues within their current unit which they feel were not or will not be addressed
- Lack of upgrades due to extended tenancy (newly remodeled units are obviously more desirable)
- Preference regarding location within the property (different floor, closer to parking, amenities)
- Moving from 1 unit type to another such as moving from a 1 bedroom apartment to a 2 bedroom

By Geoff Roberts, Buildium, Boston, MA

Whenever I’m asked what I do for a living, my go-to response is that “I work in marketing and public relations for a software company.” That’s a sufficient reply for most social situations, but on occasion I’m asked more specifically about my job responsibilities. Inevitably I’m stopped as soon as I mention “search engine optimization” or “SEO.” While this is a small part of what I do, I’ve found that it fascinates people – they tend to look at it as something of an enigma. “I’ve never understood search engine results” or “Google makes it all up anyways” are common responses, but the probing questions regarding SEO never stop there. Regardless of the industry you are in, search engine results are likely playing an increasingly important role in your company’s ability to be found by prospective customers and others interested in the products/services your business offers. As I’ve been receiving an increasing number of emails regarding SEO from Buildium customers, I figured I’d start by laying out some of the basic tried and true practices that can help your company rank more highly in search results.

What exactly is SEO?

By Jo-Anne Oliveri, ireviloution intelligence, Brisbane, Australia

I see too many property management businesses either fail completely or forever fail to achieve their targets for many and varying reasons.

It’s important, just like in any business, to understand and know your market. In order to create your business plan and targets you must know the market size, potential, averages, statistics and demographics. In this particular blog I’ll focus on the critical role market potential and averages play in the success of your business.

By Salvatore Friscia, San Diego Premier Property Management, San Diego, CA

The property is ready to be occupied, marketing is complete, and now you are receiving multiple inquires. At the first showing you receive two applications and it looks as though you’ll fill the unit quickly but remember only one party can be offered the property and after you have evaluated both applications – pulling credit information, confirming employment status and reviewing past rental history – it is clear that only one party meets your qualifications. So is it as simple as offering the rental to the qualified party and just letting the other party know that they didn’t get the unit?

By Salvatore Friscia, San Diego Premier Property Management, San Diego, CA

I made a quick trade, put an offer in on a property in Arizona and then closed my laptop and headed with the kids for lunch in La Jolla. It was after lunch that I had an all too familiar experience. We were playing tourist for the day and on the walk back to our vehicle we stopped into a small boutique store near the cove to allow each kid to choose an item of there choice as a fun reward for good behavior throughout the day. I noticed the owner of the boutique slumping over his cash register near the back of the store and I greeted him and asked how his day was going. He responded quietly, “Better then yesterday” and we struck up a conversation. The conversation quickly went toward business and the owner proceeded to tell me that he just bought the store last year and sales were considerably down. To make matters worse the landlord was increasing his rent. I empathized with him and offered some of my ideas for a short term solution but it was obvious they were falling on deaf ears as the owner quickly interrupted me and said something that made me stop and think. He told me that he was not really worried about the slower sales at his store because he was going to start managing some real estate for a couple of friends that own rentals in the area until things get better.

I was a little shocked to hear that being the owner of a local property management company and was honestly taken back. I thought to myself, here was a small business owner of a local boutique confident that he was going to solve his financial problems by managing property. I’m not saying that he couldn’t or he shouldn’t but oddly I remember hearing a similar battle cry back in 2005 when real estate was hot and everyone was becoming a real estate agent to make some extra money on the side. Has property management become the new cool thing in real estate? A million things ran through my mind as I know what it takes to provide quality property management services and I couldn’t help but wonder about the “friends” of this individual who would be relying on him to manage their asset. The tenant laws, the banking laws, local, state and federal laws, and that’s not even going into handling the asset itself.