They need a property management company. 

Why? Because very few people have all the skills required to be great landlords. Individual real estate owners and corporate real estate investors need to clear the decks so that the day-to-day particulars of property management doesn’t get in the way of planning and growing the business or adding more properties after the first one or two.

Landlords need a coach, too.

Why? Because coaches help owners and landlords succeed not only in deciding what needs to be done but also in organizing the tasks at hand.  “What is the very most important thing to do before anything else?” CREM Management helps our clients answer that simple-to-ask but difficult-to-answer question. As coaches, property managers help landlords work on their businesses instead of in their businesses.

What Do Landlords Do?

They do many things. At any point in time, a landlord might need an accountant, a lawyer, a repairman, or an errand-runner. They also need:

• Someone to interview prospective tenants.
• Help in evicting a renter who is causing problems.
• Computer and analytical experts to 
  • Obtain optimized rental value for their properties,
  • Gain insight into the current market conditions, and 
  • Recommend how to enhance cash flows from rental revenues.
• A data scientist to crunch the numbers and help with decision-making. 
• A company to set up a rent collecting system that both landlords and tenants can use easily—especially if neither one wants to deal with paper checks!
• A strategy for marketing the property and handling turnovers when they occur.

These are most of the main tasks, but it always seems like there’s more.

They’re Not Sequential Tasks

As CREM Management has found in the Los Angeles property management space over the years, a property owner of any size real estate portfolio may need any or all of these services at exactly the same time. Whether it’s for residential, multi-family, or commercial property, we find that landlords needa property manager and need a coach to navigate the turbulent real estate rental arena these days. 

CREM Management is the type of Southern California property management company that both does the work for you and coaches you on the work that needs to be done. They’re not the same thing. Coaching tends to be future-oriented.

Avoiding Nightmares

Why is it that the first ten stories we see are about tenants’ nightmares? Renting is almost by its nature a platform for communal living or working that reduces control over the spaces and enhances one’s tendency to complain. Some tenant stories are hair-raising stories to be sure. The fact is that even homeowners have neighbors with barking dogs, unkempt lawns, or remodels that swipe away one’s view. 

On the other hand, landlords have their nightmares. Here they are, and how do we avoid them?

• Tenants who drive the other tenants up the wall.
• Non-paying tenants.
• A sudden dip in the economy.
• An abrupt downturn in the neighborhood.
• A gradual decay in the building or its parts.
• Difficulty in finding people to repair those broken parts or worse,
• Having to remodel because the patches haven’t worked.
• Vacancies
• Vacancies
• Vacancies

Landlords’ nightmares seem to come in wave sets, like the ocean, and like the customers at restaurants around lunch time and grocery stores around the end of the workday. Property management companies try to smooth out the peaks and valleys.

Having Great Tenants Is the 80% Solution.

Our Los Angeles multi-family property management team has the best success in avoiding 80% of the nightmares by getting good tenants. CREM Management’s interview process is handled by our:

10 Point Tenant Screening, which includes credit reports, criminal background checks, landlord, residence, and eviction history, income and employment verification, judgment, lien, and bankruptcy history, and more.

The other trick is marketing the property in the “right” places. Some online advertising sites are markedly better than others. We know which is which.

As for evicting tenants, the fact that CREM Management is owned by a person who is not only a CPA and Real Estate owner, but also an attorney, means that particular nightmare (ugh…eviction is the worst) is not nearly as anxiety prone. 

Prevention Is the Other 20%

Preventing building decay stems from good upkeep and continuous attention to the little problems before they get big and out of control. While the economy is not under our control, preparing for the downturns stems from tight business practices like keeping expenses down and reducing turnover, watching for changes in the neighborhood, and getting help from local authorities to head off problems and protect tenants and their properties from losses. Paying attention to upcoming state laws affecting tenant and landlord contracts, rental laws, and more also helps to reduce the number of nightmares. 

Our Los Angeles commercial property management professionals pay careful attention to the local and regional economic winds to report and prescribe defensive and offensive moves to protect our clients’ assets. 

Conclusion

Landlords have been through a tough time with the Covid-19 pandemic, and while both landlords and renters have had some protections to help tide them over through their income losses, property management companies have their work cut out for them as they seek to help renters and landlords at the same time. 

The best solution is to define the property management undertaking as an exercise in collaboration—not opposition.

With the pandemic in our rearview mirrors, the lingering economic sluggishness, and the changing landscape for living and working conditions, including the Work From Home phenomena, real estate investors seek any way they can to maximize income, minimize risk, and smooth out cashflows to enhance predictability and planning. We like to think that CREM Management’s fifteen years of experience (we were established in 2009) in the Southern California property management business has resulted in helping our clients, both renters, and landlords, to achieve the highest and best experience for living and working, and for our investing clients the highest returns on their money, time, and energies. 

Please get in touch with our CREM Management professionals for excellent property management and unequaled coaching.