Lining Out Sub-Contractors (Or Keeping Them In Line)

by Jessica Hickok on January 21, 2012

My property management company hires a lot of sub-contractors.  If there is a job that needs to be done outside of general maintenance such as electrical, roofing or HVAC work, then I have to sub-contract it out.  Our in-house maintenance crew is awesome, but sometimes the job is just out of their scope.

However, there are sometimes that the work just doesn’t come out right when using subs.  There is a way to keep your frustrations at bay and that is set forth a policy now.  Our office policy states that paychecks are only available on Fridays after 2:00 pm.  In order to receive the paycheck, the work must be completed and the the invoice turned into the office no later than 5pm on the Wednesday before.  We check/validate the work on Thursdays and then checks are cut.  There are no exceptions and we have this all written out in our guidelines sheet that we give to the sub-contractors when they sign on to work with us.

There is a reason why we check work on Thursdays… is this.  A light switch was installed by the electrician and they cut the drywall hole way too big.  They just left it wide open, didn’t even bother to try to fix it or put the faceplate on it. This kind of stuff frustrates me to no end.  You might be thinking, just cover it up with an oversize switch plate.  Um… hole is still too big.

Uhh... it's a little over cut.

So… needless to say, this electrical sub-contractor didn’t get a paycheck this week.  He was ticked.  But seriously, why should we pay you when the work isn’t done and it isn’t done right? You’ll have to wait until next week, so sorry, I told you we run a tight ship around here.

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Chilled About The Fire

by Jessica Hickok on January 13, 2012

In my almost 12 years of managing rental property, I’ve had to only have to deal with one major house fire, one molitov cocktail and one almost serious fire just today.  I consider myself fortunate, but my hard work and obsession with checklists is paying off.  More and more of our tenants are taking good care of their properties, keeping their smoke detectors working properly and my staff is doing a good job of keeping periodic inspections on each of our 200+ properties.

But back to the seriousness of today.  My tenant calls in and says “Uhh… yeah I’ve got a little problem.”  Surprisingly, he was very chilled out about this.  Most of my tenants are drama queens and I get such exaggerated stories, but this one was actually pretty even keeled about the whole situation. So I pressed him a little further….

I ask: “Uhh… what kind of problem?” (I find it easy to match his zen like attitude.)

Tenant: “Well, I was in the shower…”

Me thinking, not saying: “Mayday! Mayday! I don’t want to hear about you in the shower!”

Tenant interrupting my thoughts: “…and when I got out, I noticed the side of my house was on fire.”

Me shrieking: “What?! Is everyone and everything okay?!” <—drama queen!

Tenant: “Yeah, it’s all good, the fire department got here pretty quick and got it out.  Everything is fine, except there is a little bit of siding damage.”

Me: “Mmmm…kay, glad to hear you all are safe. I will send my crew out to evaluate the damage and let you know where we will go from here.  I’m assuming that your smoke detectors are all in place and working, right?”

Tenant: “Yes, they are.”

Me thinking, not saying: “Uhh… they better be.”

Me, now saying outloud: “Well thanks for calling and letting me know.”

I breathe a sigh of relief and make myself a cold Diet Coke on the rocks.  You know, because I’m chilled about this kind of stuff. * insert sarcasm here *  Until I saw the pictures that my maintenance crew took…. O.M.G. this could’ve been way worse.

This could've been way worse.

A little more than "just some siding damage."

We’re still determining the cause and I will keep you posted as to how this happened.  However, as with any fire, I take this as a moment to broadcast this important PSA—- please, please remember to check the smoke detectors in your home.  Be sure that they are properly working and that there are fresh batteries in them.  Smoke detectors save lives.  At least they certainly did today.

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I’d Still Like To Call Myself A Blogger For 2011

December 31, 2011

Let’s just say that blogging on this personal site has been on the back burner for 2011.  But considering that it’s the last day of the year, I might as well post, just so that I can continue to call myself a blogger.  Granted, 19 blog posts in one year hardly qualifies me for “Blogger” [...]

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Boring Real Estate Listing Videos

November 16, 2011

Now this is how real estate listing videos should be done.  It is not boring and there is no “call me for all your real estate needs” REALTOR blah blah blahing their way all the features of the home.  I only wish I could take credit for this idea and say that I did this.  [...]

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Quit It With The Phone Books Already

August 10, 2011

There are a couple of ways to rattle my cage and it seems like it is always Ma Bell that does it.  Granted, they no longer call it Southwestern Bell, Bell South, SBC or whatever the phone company has re-invented themselves as these days and I probably couldn’t care less.  The hubs and I cut [...]

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Red Listed and Red Listing

August 7, 2011

I’ve had some projects bouncing around for awhile now and one of them is finally getting all of the loose ends tied down as I mentioned in my previous post.  It’s landlordredlist.com.  Ironically, the “red” part of it has nothing to do with my red soled shoe obsession.  The red-listing had started a long time [...]

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Getting My Feet Wet

August 4, 2011

I am embracing some new things/changes with my daily grind.  Not sure what all it entails yet, but I need to tie up some loose ends on outstanding projects and really make a break on some new ones that are brewing in my head.  It’s a stretch-and-grow thing for me as there may be a [...]

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Third Time’s A Charm

August 3, 2011

I’m so excited! The National Association of REALTORS® has selected me (and The Donald) to speak at their annual conference and expo again in 2011! This is the third year in a row that we will speak on Property Management and Residential Real Estate Investments at the conference. The first year 2009, in San Diego, [...]

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My Job Stinks

June 26, 2011

Lately I just haven’t been into the property management side of my job.  Tenants and I aren’t getting along all that great and that gets depressing.   And what’s making it worse is that some of the applications we are getting in for our available properties, well, they literally stink.  They carry odors of massive [...]

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Tales Of Rent Week

June 13, 2011

The first week of each month is when all of the rents are due in my company and therefore it is dubbed the very uncreative, unoriginal “rent week” that gets thrown around by all of the crazies I work with. I must admit that I am tired and although I shouldn’t admit to it, I’m [...]

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