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?
If you have to wait very long for the answer to this question, you can assume the answer is, "Too often". Property managers who keep good records and maintain good communications with their tenants should not need to defend more than one security deposit withholding per year per one hundred accounts. Property managers should be able to defend their security deposit deductions in court so long as a Move-In Condition Report was completed in a thorough manner, and receipts for all work are provided.