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Jul
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So, you’re ready to take over the building, and you need a short guide to commercial property management. It could be a house or an office building; it doesn’t matter, because you are still nervous. You’ve done your research; you have poured through what feels like at least a hundred different books on landlording, and you have devoured the internet in search of material. You’ve figured out where the rent money will go, how often you’re going to contact the tenants, when you are going to make repairs, how you are going to pay for utilities, what you’re going to wear when you introduce yourself to the tenant, and what you’re going to say. You are ready.
You introduce yourself to the family or business residing in your property, just like you read in the short guide to commercial property management. Everything goes just like you planned it; they smiled at you, greeted you politely, and offered you to come inside. You did go inside, but not too far; you didn’t want to infringe on their private space. You understand that even though you own the property, it is still their space; if your tenants do not have privacy, they will probably leave. And that goes for a family or a business; the family has private, personal things that happen behind the walls of your house, and the business is going to run a company without you in the way.
So, it’s all peachy. You’re a landlord, and everything is going smoothly.
That is, until your phone rings at three in the morning. The little boy in the family has clogged the toilet, and they want you to go fix it. “Use a plunger,” you tell them, but they insist that you come unclog it for them. Or, things are going fine, and the business says to you, “We are very successful and need a larger property, we’ll be moving.” You realize then that it will be very difficult to get a new company in your walls, but you need on in their now. These scenarios start happening more rapidly. The more comfortable the tenants are calling you, the more they call you. Sometimes you get so frustrated with them you want to curse at them and kick them out of the house. You don’t know what to do.
These kinds of scenarios are common for new landlords; this is a fairly normal set of circumstances. What do you do? We will be posting more information to help you deal with exactly these kinds of problems.