The 16 Questions
- How many residences do you manage?
- How many evictions have you performed in the past 5 years?
- Do you specialize in a geographic location or a certain type of property?
- How many people work for your management company?
- If you combined all the years of property management experience for everyone in your company, how many years would that be?
- How many of your employees have a real estate license?
- Do you hire leasing agents that are compensated for each property they rent?
- How many property management related educational classes or seminars have you attended in the past year?
- How many applicants do you turn down for every one you accept?
- How long is your management contract with owners?
- What was your vacancy rate last year?
- What day of the month do you typically mail a check to your owners?
- How many times have you been to court regarding deductions from a tenant's security deposit and what were the results?
- Are you a member of NARPM?
- What is your system for inspecting rentals?
- What are your management fees and what costs are included?
It takes at least 50 properties to become efficient. Less than 50 properties indicates that property management is a secondary job, not a full time occupation. On the other hand, when a property management company grows to the point that they handle hundreds of accounts, direct supervision of many employees can become a problem (question #5 addresses this potential problem).