Commercial Property Management Guide

You’ve finally taken over the building, and you’re ready to begin your landlording career.  First order of business? Collect the tenant’s information.  You need to know how to contact them.

Collecting information
First rule of thumb, smile.  Be on high alert for any and all opportunities to smile.  We will repeat this several times throughout this post.

Usually this process goes smoothly, so you usually have nothing to worry about.  First, keep your cool.  You are the boss, but don’t be a jerk about it.  You need to be firm, but fair and friendly.  When you meet them, be sure you are standing erect and carry confidence in your voice.  If you lack confidence or are easily intimidated, landlording is not a career for you.  You need to show confidence because the tenants won’t think that they can walk all over you.  Also, people like it whentheir boss appears to know what he or she is doing, and that the boss has everything under control.  You want them to trust you and to be able to rely on you, so you must appear this way.  Smile.
Simply ask them for the information and let them give it to you.  Sometimes, tenants may seem a bit suspicious at your asking all kinds of personal information.  Explain to them the reasons why, gently.  For instance, if you ask for their work or cell phone number, explain to them that you may need to contact them in a hurry, such as in the event of a stranger trying to get inside or a fire.  Explain to them that you need their social security numbers so that you can report to the credit industries their good payment history.  Also, this is for your protection, too, you must get their information, because you want to check their credit.  You need to see if they are reliable and can be trusted with rent payments.  This goes for both residential and business property management.  Remember, be sure to smile.
If a client resists, try to let them know that it is for their own benefit.  If they do not want to give out their phone numbers because they are afraid of telemarketers or getting unneccessary calls at odd hours, explain to them that you will take every precaution necessary to keep their number confidential.  Smile.
Like we said before, usually this process goes smoothly.  However, there are times when the tenants just simply won’t give you the information.  This is more common among residential tenants than it is for businesses.  Sometimes, though, small businesses, usually single person operations or private firms, will give you a hard time; larger firms usually operate fairly and won’t pose you any problem.  When the tenants absolutely refuse to give you the information, don’t be too quick to get into an argument.  Forget about fighting with them.  It is better worth your energy and time to collect this information from elsewhere.  Ask the previous landlord, check with the city, do whatever you need to do to find this information.  It won’t be that difficult to collect their information from other sources.

When you get their information, store it away in a safe place.  You’re ready to move on to the next step.

written by admin \\ tags: businesses, collecting information, residential tenants, smile, smiling

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.

written by admin \\ tags: house, landlord, landlording, office building, property, run a company, tenants