Phoenix Area Real Estate Blog » Property Management

Steve Belt Closes Property Management Business

Steve Belt — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:47:08 +0000

That’s right. After managing other people’s property for nearly 4 years on a full time basis, I have decided to close the doors, metaphorically speaking.

I actually made this decision a few months ago, but I’ve waited to put it on the blog until all of my landlords and tenants have had a chance to hear the news for themselves, make the decisions that are best for each of them individually, and wrap up all of the formalities associated with those decisions (primarily the transfer of repair funds and security deposits).

Why did I close my business? For a reason I never expected: my personal health. You see, with the current economic climate (and I absolutely hate that phrase, by the way), I was having approximately one unexpected vacancy every month. Whether it was an eviction; a tenant calling and saying they cannot pay; a tenant moving out in the middle of the night, never to be heard from since; or even the strangest of cases: a tenant that was kidnapped from his home and is presumed dead; at least one property a month was experiencing an unexpected vacancy.

Although I don’t actually think these vacancies were my fault, at the moment of crisis I would consider it such, and worse, would consider myself a failure. If you look at my tenant placement stats, they are kind of sick. 90% of the time, I personally find the tenant through my marketing efforts. So if I wasn’t to blame (since I found this bad apple tenant), who was? Certainly not the landlord. But we all need someone to blame, so the easy answer was me.

Unfortunately, I typically found I was nearly unable to face or discuss the situation with the landlord, often going a week or more without ever answering my phone directly. This is a horrible behavior in the face of crisis, which would further make it look like I was to blame. In reality, though, I would plummet into a state of depression that I never, ever expected of myself…and it was happening every month. Worse, the problem was affecting the way I managed every single property, not just the one in crisis.

Nine or Ten months of this scenario, and a very, very agonizing day on the sofa with my dear wife Jan, and I came to the realization that I had to stop the problem, before it stopped me. And thus, I’ve closed it down.

I am now back to managing just my own properties. And while I’m certainly not immune from the occasional bad apple tenant, I don’t fret talking to myself about the need to clean up, repair, re-market, or in other words, pay for the acquisition of the next tenant. I mention my own properties, because I’ve already had a few people say, “Hey! I thought you were closing this down, but I see one of your ads on craigslist!” Rest assured I’m not playing favorites, but rather, just trying to fill my vacancies like any other landlord.

Time to check that water shut off valve

Steve Belt — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:48:40 +0000

It’s a simple fact of living in Phoenix that the water here is hard. And by hard water, I mean it is loaded with minerals. It’s safe to drink, if not particularly pleasant tasting. Region by region throughout the city, the level of unpleasantness does tend to vary from “that’s almost tolerable” to “there’s no way I could even boil potatoes with that”.

A consequence of the hard water, is that it’s also hard on plumbing fixtures. Recently, a rental property I manage had two simultaneous failures, which resulted in the entire house flooding. The first failure was of a shut off valve for one of the two washing machine supply lines (I never did find out if it was the hot or the cold). When the last tenant moved out and took their washer with them, they suspected a problem, so they turned off the water supply at the house main shut off.

The second problem, however, developed a few days later, when the landscaper came by to mow the front yard. Being a normal mid-May day (aka hot), he wanted to soak his hat in some water, so he turned on the water at the main shut off valve. He soaked his hat at the adjacent hose spigot, then thought he turned the water back off. Unfortunately, that valve broke exactly at the wrong time. The result, was that the water wasn’t turned back off, the valve in the laundry failed, and thus water began flowing into the vacant house for approximately 10 hours. It was around this time that a neighbor called me (thanks to the for rent sign in the yard) and informed me there was water running out of the garage, beneath the garage door.

I asked the neighbor to turn the water at the shut off valve, which she informed me she did. Except 30 minutes later, she called back again saying there was still water coming out of the garage. At that point, I asked her if she was able to turn the water off at the street. Fortunately, another neighbor was able to help with turn the water off at the street, and finally the flow of water in the home ceased.

The total damage: $17,500 to dry the house out, replace all of the carpet, replace most of the baseboards in the home, paint, and various drywall touch ups.

My plumber came out to fix the problems with the valves, and alerted me to a problem that I want to share with everyone. Here is a picture of the inside of the valve that broke:

Feel free to click on the picture to enlarge it. What you should notice in this picture is the thin round piece of metal that appears to be sheared in half within either side of the interior of this valve. That metal is supposed to be connected. But the hard water, combined with this valve now being 9 years old, caused this to break in the open position. The design of this valve seems to be one in which failure is almost certain, and probably right around the time you need it to work the most. The plumber noted that this type of valve will start to fail about the same time as the other fixtures within the home fail, meaning when you need it most, it’s as likely as not to let you down.

If you have a home that is 10+ years old, and this is the type of main shut off valve that you have, you might strongly consider changing the valve to a newer ball valve like this:

These ball valves only take 1/4 turn to full open or close and the connection between the valve and the handle is a much thicker, sturdier metal, which should last a much, much longer time, even with the hard water here in Phoenix.

Phoenix and Scottsdale Property Management

Steve Belt — Thu, 28 May 2009 01:47:47 +0000

If you look up at the top of the blog, there’s a menu bar with a choice for Property Management. That link is there, because even though I don’t mention this very often, I am a property manager for homes in the Northeast part of the valley. I wouldn’t say being a property manager is a glamorous, glorious, or even fun job that a REALTOR can take on, but I do personally own 9 rental homes in the Phoenix area, and thus managing property for other landlords began to make sense as sales dwindled to a near stand still 3 years ago.

My office is located right at the apex of the Loop 101 in North Scottsdale where it transitions from being a north/south freeway to east/west. From my office, I can easily get to almost any portion of the northeast valley within 30 minutes, which is what I consider to be a requirement as a property manager. I’ll explain why: Often, I need to drop by a rental property with very little or no notice. For example, when someone calls me after seeing the for rent sign in the yard. A tenant prospect that is interested in seeing the inside of the home may wait 20-30 minutes, if I’m able to I rush over to let them in. But they won’t wait an hour, or even 45 minutes. At best, in cases where the home is further than 30 minutes away, a tenant prospect will agree to make an appointment for some time later. Here though, we take the big risk that the tenant prospect will simply rent the next house they see…as the price and features of many rentals in a given area are really quite similar, the difference can quite literally be the house they see first.

Another reason I keep homes that I manage within 30 minutes, is because if there is a problem at the home that requires my presence (like the busted circuit breaker that wouldn’t reset yesterday or the air filters that needed changing the day before), I don’t want my schedule and needing to carve out 2 or 3 hrs of drive time, just to get to a rental property, to be the reason something important couldn’t be dealt with today, but had to wait until tomorrow. When you manage 50+ homes, having an outlier that can potentially take 2+ hours in drive time to visit, simply isn’t practical.

For homes within my feasibility range (Tempe, most of Phoenix, Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, and Fountain Hills), if you are looking for a property manager, I’d love to talk to you about what I do, and how I might be able to help. In the mean time, feel free to click on that property management menu link, and check out what I do, and how I might be able to help you if you own are considering owning a rental property in the Phoenix area.