As a landlord, if you hire a property manager to oversee your rentals, then Jon Selinger recommends you keep one important thing in mind: Let the property manager take care of everything, literally everything. Harsh? No. Necessary? Definitely.
As the owner of ASM Properties in Tennessee, Selinger and his team of property managers know that the best way to keep the relationship between the landlord, property manager and tenant running smoothly is to keep the property manager in the middle of every task and conversation.
The tenant and owner shouldn’t be talking, he explains. Your property manager is in charge of overseeing the home and all the details associated with renting your property including background checks on possible renters and depositing rental checks every month. There is really nothing that a landlord needs to worry about, Selinger says.
Besides being the guardian of the property, the manager also serves as the link of communication between a landlord and his tenant. That’s the property manager’s main job, says Selinger. And although he cannot go into details about the exact conversations that take place because of legal restrictions, Selinger does note that it’s almost amusing how many times tenants don’t like the response they receive from the property manager, so they try to go behind his back to contact the landlord. It’s not as though the property manager wants to disappoint the tenants who occupy the homes, but the person whose interests are always in the forefront of the property manager’s mind should always be the landlord.
When these situations do arise, says Selinger, it’s important that the landlord directs the tenant back to the property manager, and that the property manager is alerted about the call. Landlords don’t always know everything about the legal aspects of owning a rental property, zoning laws and building permits. So in most cases the safest bet is for them is to direct all questions back to ASM Properties.
Additionally, if the landlord is renting multiple properties, lives outside the state where the rentals are, or has a full-time job of his own, it can be difficult to answer all of a tenant’s phone calls and questions as quickly as he would like to. So instead of leaving requests unfulfilled, the tenant can be sure that all his inquiries are taken care of if he calls the property manager directly and the landlord can be certain that all of his renters are properly taken care of.
