July 23, 2007
FIRST PERSON: Pinch hitter | A short-term property manager talks about being a first responder to real estate's little catastrophes
BY MIKE FRIEDLAND
As-needed property manager
To go on vacation is a stressful endeavor. I currently manage nine [apartment] units of my own. Most times I call a friend and still pray that nothing goes wrong in my absence. There are just so many things that could go wrong that I stress about. If you go away, it snows and someone slips on the front steps, all of a sudden someone's suing you. Let's say your oil tank springs a leak. You have oil in the basement and the whole place has to be evacuated. I guess most people don't experience it, but I've experienced almost everything. I've had my own [units] and worked for a landlord for over 10 years and so when I go away I stress out. And a lot of people do, and that's where I come in.
[Willard Square Property Care] is not a typical property management business because there are no contracts involved. It's on an as-needed basis. And the "as-needed" is usually when the owner of the unit goes away. It's not necessarily [geared] for the out-of-town investor or the big-time investor who has 600 units and could have their own management company. It's more for the owner occupant. And people like that can't afford property managers because there are monthly fees and you're getting frustrated because your taxes went up and your insurance went up and the price for oil is rising and rents aren't rising.
I have 36 customers and most of them are in the South Portland and Portland area, but not beyond that, and I actually like that. I'm willing to travel further, but for me and my lifestyle it actually works. I do carpentry and renovations and I do this.
Just for the week I charge $30 and every time I have to actually go to the property it's $25 whether it's an hour or less, and once it's above an hour it's $25 every hour. So [my clients] go away for a week to some graduation or they go camping for two weeks and they pay me a fee and they give all the tenants my number ˆ I'm on call 24/7 and everyone's happy.
My calls happen mostly at night. So it's not like I have to stay around the day waiting for the phone to ring. I've been doing this for about two years and I think I've gotten one call during the day ever. Most everything happens when people come home from work or on the weekends. [The time commitment], to tell you the truth, is really minor because I could have five customers at once and get no calls. In the summer there's not that much to do. In the wintertime it's a little bit more, because people have steam boilers and I check the water level and sometimes they don't want their basement to freeze. They'll give me specific instructions: "If it drops below 15 degrees make sure you go down there and plug in the little heater in the basement."
I have one customer [who is in] Peru for the year, so I have a full list when the wintertime comes: insulate the windows, turn off the water to the outside, if someone moves out I have to rent their apartment. There's a run of things to do for that, but they're a little more extensive.
Most of the times I don't get called, but sometimes I do. When some people go away when the snow starts to thaw they're worried the basements are going to flood and they're worried the sump pumps aren't going to work. So sometimes I just swing by to check to make sure the sump pumps are working. There are just a lot of little things I do. It's peace of mind that I offer people.
Reliability for the noncommittal
I had a client go away in the wintertime. This was just last winter. She says, "There's nothing really to worry about, everything is good, everyone pays their own heat." But what she didn't tell me is that in the front stairwell there's a radiator that ran off the heat in one of the apartments. And this woman who had the apartment let her heat go out and she was heating her place by her gas stove. And so subsequently there was no heat in the front stairwell and the pipes that run up the front stairwell froze solid and the pipes go up to two apartments upstairs. And so what I did was put a heater in the front hallway and when I came back a few hours later there was water spewing everywhere. It was full blast water coming out of hot and cold. It was a nightmare. The water had gone underneath the hallway walls into the first apartment, it had gone down to the basement and got all the storage soaked, plus the upstairs had no water. It was a full-day fix where I'm mopping, I'm drying, I've got fans going, I'm replacing the pipes. And that wasn't pleasant, but it was part of it. And she was psyched that I was there. I called her afterwards. I didn't call her during it saying you have frozen pipes. Afterwards, I said here's what happened, it's all fixed and just relax.
I didn't start out trying to do this. It started out with my training [as an employee for another property management firm] and then I had a lot of friends who own multi-units and in the beginning it turned out where everyone was calling me to watch their place and I wouldn't charge a thing. And then after a while I began to charge because I had to go over sometimes and it starts to get ridiculous. I kept my friends as customers and then they would tell people, and they would tell people, and so eventually it got to the point where I started to say, this is a business. And it's not a business where I have to devote all my time and I'm putting in a large amount of money to get it started. It sort of trickled in as it goes and every year I get more customers. And even if my customer base grows to a couple hundred I still don't feel like it's going to be full-time work. I still feel I'll be doing renovations and carpentry as well. But it's something extra that I enjoy. I think last year I made a little over $5,000 on it. So it's not the majority of what I do, but for the hours I put in for that $5,000, it's pretty good.
I started marketing myself just this year. And what I did was go on the online tax database. I started in South Portland. You go online and you punch in "four units" and it pops up all the four units and the owners of the four units. So I made a postcard and mailed it to everyone, and I've got a few calls on that already. I think the trick is getting the word out and letting people know there is such a thing. From my limited research of tracing owners of two to four units it seems that at least 60% of them are owner-occupied. This adds up to a lot of properties in the Portland area that I am targeting.
I don't know if there are more owner occupants but expenses have made things a lot tighter, forcing more do-it-yourself owners. I think the average price for a house now is $250,000 at least. So people who actually want to buy a house but can't afford it are looking to multi-units to help. The rent supplements the income. And I don't know how they do it, to tell you the truth. It seems definitely tighter and there are definitely more people not looking to spend money.
When I first moved here and I bought a multi-unit the heat wasn't working in the wintertime. So I called the plumber and the plumber came over and he told me it was just the switch at the top of the stair: the safety shut off switch. And he gave me a bill for $50. I remember feeling like an idiot, for one. And I remember thinking that's not going to happen again. So I don't know how people do it, because plumbers are a fortune, electricians are a fortune. I do all the work myself in my places from a need. Early on I just said I can't afford it.
I do think this business has potential because I don't think there's anything else out there and I think it's a great service. It's very noncommittal and it could be as little as $35. You go away pay $35 and feel good about it. If I have 500 people and a few going away each week, $70 a week with $25 here and there, I think it could be a good living.
As-needed property manager
To go on vacation is a stressful endeavor. I currently manage nine [apartment] units of my own. Most times I call a friend and still pray that nothing goes wrong in my absence. There are just so many things that could go wrong that I stress about. If you go away, it snows and someone slips on the front steps, all of a sudden someone's suing you. Let's say your oil tank springs a leak. You have oil in the basement and the whole place has to be evacuated. I guess most people don't experience it, but I've experienced almost everything. I've had my own [units] and worked for a landlord for over 10 years and so when I go away I stress out. And a lot of people do, and that's where I come in.
[Willard Square Property Care] is not a typical property management business because there are no contracts involved. It's on an as-needed basis. And the "as-needed" is usually when the owner of the unit goes away. It's not necessarily [geared] for the out-of-town investor or the big-time investor who has 600 units and could have their own management company. It's more for the owner occupant. And people like that can't afford property managers because there are monthly fees and you're getting frustrated because your taxes went up and your insurance went up and the price for oil is rising and rents aren't rising.
I have 36 customers and most of them are in the South Portland and Portland area, but not beyond that, and I actually like that. I'm willing to travel further, but for me and my lifestyle it actually works. I do carpentry and renovations and I do this.
Just for the week I charge $30 and every time I have to actually go to the property it's $25 whether it's an hour or less, and once it's above an hour it's $25 every hour. So [my clients] go away for a week to some graduation or they go camping for two weeks and they pay me a fee and they give all the tenants my number ˆ I'm on call 24/7 and everyone's happy.
My calls happen mostly at night. So it's not like I have to stay around the day waiting for the phone to ring. I've been doing this for about two years and I think I've gotten one call during the day ever. Most everything happens when people come home from work or on the weekends. [The time commitment], to tell you the truth, is really minor because I could have five customers at once and get no calls. In the summer there's not that much to do. In the wintertime it's a little bit more, because people have steam boilers and I check the water level and sometimes they don't want their basement to freeze. They'll give me specific instructions: "If it drops below 15 degrees make sure you go down there and plug in the little heater in the basement."
I have one customer [who is in] Peru for the year, so I have a full list when the wintertime comes: insulate the windows, turn off the water to the outside, if someone moves out I have to rent their apartment. There's a run of things to do for that, but they're a little more extensive.
Most of the times I don't get called, but sometimes I do. When some people go away when the snow starts to thaw they're worried the basements are going to flood and they're worried the sump pumps aren't going to work. So sometimes I just swing by to check to make sure the sump pumps are working. There are just a lot of little things I do. It's peace of mind that I offer people.
Reliability for the noncommittal
I had a client go away in the wintertime. This was just last winter. She says, "There's nothing really to worry about, everything is good, everyone pays their own heat." But what she didn't tell me is that in the front stairwell there's a radiator that ran off the heat in one of the apartments. And this woman who had the apartment let her heat go out and she was heating her place by her gas stove. And so subsequently there was no heat in the front stairwell and the pipes that run up the front stairwell froze solid and the pipes go up to two apartments upstairs. And so what I did was put a heater in the front hallway and when I came back a few hours later there was water spewing everywhere. It was full blast water coming out of hot and cold. It was a nightmare. The water had gone underneath the hallway walls into the first apartment, it had gone down to the basement and got all the storage soaked, plus the upstairs had no water. It was a full-day fix where I'm mopping, I'm drying, I've got fans going, I'm replacing the pipes. And that wasn't pleasant, but it was part of it. And she was psyched that I was there. I called her afterwards. I didn't call her during it saying you have frozen pipes. Afterwards, I said here's what happened, it's all fixed and just relax.
I didn't start out trying to do this. It started out with my training [as an employee for another property management firm] and then I had a lot of friends who own multi-units and in the beginning it turned out where everyone was calling me to watch their place and I wouldn't charge a thing. And then after a while I began to charge because I had to go over sometimes and it starts to get ridiculous. I kept my friends as customers and then they would tell people, and they would tell people, and so eventually it got to the point where I started to say, this is a business. And it's not a business where I have to devote all my time and I'm putting in a large amount of money to get it started. It sort of trickled in as it goes and every year I get more customers. And even if my customer base grows to a couple hundred I still don't feel like it's going to be full-time work. I still feel I'll be doing renovations and carpentry as well. But it's something extra that I enjoy. I think last year I made a little over $5,000 on it. So it's not the majority of what I do, but for the hours I put in for that $5,000, it's pretty good.
I started marketing myself just this year. And what I did was go on the online tax database. I started in South Portland. You go online and you punch in "four units" and it pops up all the four units and the owners of the four units. So I made a postcard and mailed it to everyone, and I've got a few calls on that already. I think the trick is getting the word out and letting people know there is such a thing. From my limited research of tracing owners of two to four units it seems that at least 60% of them are owner-occupied. This adds up to a lot of properties in the Portland area that I am targeting.
I don't know if there are more owner occupants but expenses have made things a lot tighter, forcing more do-it-yourself owners. I think the average price for a house now is $250,000 at least. So people who actually want to buy a house but can't afford it are looking to multi-units to help. The rent supplements the income. And I don't know how they do it, to tell you the truth. It seems definitely tighter and there are definitely more people not looking to spend money.
When I first moved here and I bought a multi-unit the heat wasn't working in the wintertime. So I called the plumber and the plumber came over and he told me it was just the switch at the top of the stair: the safety shut off switch. And he gave me a bill for $50. I remember feeling like an idiot, for one. And I remember thinking that's not going to happen again. So I don't know how people do it, because plumbers are a fortune, electricians are a fortune. I do all the work myself in my places from a need. Early on I just said I can't afford it.
I do think this business has potential because I don't think there's anything else out there and I think it's a great service. It's very noncommittal and it could be as little as $35. You go away pay $35 and feel good about it. If I have 500 people and a few going away each week, $70 a week with $25 here and there, I think it could be a good living.
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