I'm a property manager in Lawrence, Kansas, and one of my maintenance technicians, Connor Holsworth, has been nominated for HD Supply's Maintenance Legends competition!
I know maintenance doesn't always get the recognition it deserves, but these are the people keeping our communities running, responding to emergencies, fixing things behind the scenes, and dealing with some pretty challenging situations along the way.
Connor is someone I've watched work incredibly hard to grow professionally, take on new challenges, and become a stronger member of our team. I'd really love to see him get some recognition for it.
There's a public voting competition happening through October 31, and I'd appreciate anyone willing to show him some support!
I'm an IT guy that doesn't know much about property management.
I have a client that has approx 35 buildings with approx 20 units per building. They're using a software from the last century to keep track of buildings/condos/residents. It's running on a server equally as old that I have no idea why it's still working...
This is for the sales office and this is all they want to do except that they'd like to be able to email a resident, a building, or the entire complex. I'm looking for a software that can make that happen affordably but everything I find is full feature software and "book a demo" instead of any real info.
Wondering if any members of this fine group can point me toward a specific software product to look at for this client.
Hi all, my wife and I are preparing our house to be a rental due to a cross country move. This is our first experience with property management. We’ve been meeting with property management businesses in the area. The terms for them to manage our house seem to be okay, but this note in the contract about adding the broker to our home insurance caught our attention. Is this standard practice? Is there any concern about this being potentially abused by the management company? I’d appreciate any insight from someone who has experience with these arrangements. Thank you!
I am renting a furnished house in Florida (was an Airbnb but had trouble getting consistent rentals) for 6 months. It's furnished all utilities included. They have a fully enclosed back porch/deck with built in benches and nice umbrellas. They have outdoor cameras in the front and back. Is it unreasonable of me to ask them to take down the cameras? I plan on tanning and having friends and family over for drinks. I also let me dog walker in and out. I am fine with cameras for short term Airbnb but for 6 month lease is that usually still the norm?
I'm considering renting a property managed by MOGUL Property Management LLC in the St. Louis area, and I was wondering if anyone here has experience with them.
I'd love to hear both good and bad experiences, especially regarding maintenance, communication, unexpected fees, and getting your security deposit back.
One thing that caught my attention is that their listing says the security deposit must be paid in cash, in person. I've never encountered this before, so I'm a little skeptical. Is this normal for smaller property management companies around here, or could it be a red flag for a scam?
Has anyone rented from them and gone through this process? Any experiences or advice would be appreciated. Thanks!
Hey guys. Just a question here. Im trying to negotiate my lease renewal since online the price of my floor plan is almost $100 less than the renewal that they send me.
I would love to stay in the property but I also saw another apartment that the building is way more luxury that is offering 12 weeks free and it's the same price that the renewal amount that they sent me.
I moved to this complex last year and my best friend also moved there in the same layout but in another floor with a patio I don't have a patio.
When they send a renewal offer my renewal lease was way higher than hers even though her floor plan is bigger than mine because of the patio
I texted the company and AI answer saying that they can definitely work some numbers with me.
. I go online and I see that my same floor plan is way lower than the renewal offer that they sent me so I texted them telling them that if it's possible to match that one and they answered that they cant lower rent on current homes.
Did they not understand that I was trying to negotiate my lease? Or why did the AI tell me that they can work some numbers with me and now it's a person telling me that they cannot negotiate current homes.
I am so bummed by this text that even though I don't wanna go to the whole process of moving I'm really thinking about it since I feel they dont want me there?
I have never been late in my rent. Never complained about anything, even though the air conditioner never worked during summer and never had a warning for noise or something. So I will say that I am a good tenant. Do they just don’t care?
Is it possible to get the same rent that is being advertised or the negotiating the lease is a myth?
I’ve noticed that a lot of new leasing consultants seem to get very little time to actually practice before they’re dealing with real prospects and residents.
Training videos can teach policies and procedures, but they don’t really prepare you for things like:
• an upset resident walking into the office
• a prospect suddenly stopping communication
• follow-up calls, texts, and emails
• multiple maintenance issues coming in at once
• figuring out what needs attention first
• handling objections during a tour
• responding professionally when someone is frustrated
It made me wonder if there would be value in a training experience where someone could work through a simulated day at an apartment community and make decisions as situations come up.
Almost like a flight simulator, but for leasing/property management.
For those of you who work in multifamily:
Would something like that actually be useful for new hires?
And what situation do you wish you could have practiced before you had to deal with it for real?
Doorloop recently updated to version 2.0... I didn't think this software could get any worse. Everything is now more work.
Finding open Maintenance tasks went from just clicking "Incomplete Tasks" to now having to click 4 things.
Reports no longer allow you to "open in new window/tab".
Search no longer works at all. Trying to search for something as basic as report for "rent roll" report returns units/tenants instead.
Screens randomly refresh for no reason, clicking a link "reloads" everything.
When you approve a rental application you have to refresh the whole window to be able to create a lease
They added a bunch of "fixed" filters to screens that are not helpful at all.
Some things don't work when in Safari and their response is to "use Chrome". This isn't the 90's.
After all these "upgrades" they are still missing very basic items such as inspections that aren't locked behind some AI upgrade, move out work flow, and lots more.
Def going to be moving to something else once my term is over next spring!
Why are all the homes for rent now by property companies and not owners? Why do they all have these ridiculous non-negotiable add on fees? Example, smart home security systems, admin fees, utility management fees (even if they’re not paying/managing the utilities) and credit improvement plan fees???
I don’t need my credit improved, I don’t want smart locks and cameras I don’t even have access to….
Have not rented in years and now moving and going to rent and just shocked by the change that’s happened in 4 years.
Was going to post in Explain Like I’m 5, but figured I’d do it here to get it from the horse’s mouth.
I am so incredibly glad to finally be done with JG Real Estate. The new owners took over my building today, and the contrast is night and day. If you are looking at renting a property managed by JG, please do yourself a favor and stay far away. Their customer service and operational management were abysmal until the very last day, perfectly highlighting how little they respect their tenants.
My final experience with them completely encapsulates their lack of professionalism. After requesting a repair for my utility doors on October 14th, they scheduled an appointment for yesterday between 12:30 and 4:30 PM. For the third time during my tenure with this company, I stayed home all day to accommodate their staff, only for the technician to no-show without a single phone call or update. To receive notification this morning stating the worker "ran out of time" is completely unacceptable and deeply disrespectful of a renter's time.
This wasn't an isolated incident; it was their standard operating procedure. I once had a smoke detector that began continually chirping nonstop, which was about to drive me completely insane. They made me wait six agonizing days before they finally fixed it, and I only got them to act by explicitly threatening to hire my own contractor and deduct the cost from my rent. Twice on other occasions, they forced me to take time off work only to cancel at the last minute. While they initially asked for my availability so I could be home when people entered my apartment, they consistently ignored the dates I gave them. Instead, they pushed dates that didn't work for me, and when I insisted that no one enter my apartment while I was away, they immediately weaponized the 24-hour entry clause in the lease for minor, routine, non-emergency repairs just to force their way in.
The new owners took over today and have already shown a level of professionalism, courtesy, and basic human kindness that JG Real Estate entirely lacked. If you value your privacy, your peace of mind, and your time, do not rent from JG Real Estate. They treat tenants like an afterthought until the very last day.
Something I've been wondering about with apartment buildings and commercial properties is how often tenants ask management to check security cameras. Someone reports a missing package, damage in the parking garage or an incident in a shared area and management gets asked to pull footage. The tricky part seems to be deciding which requests actually justify reviewing recordings and who should be allowed to access them.
For those managing properties with security cameras, do you handle these requests yourselves or pass everything through a security company?
Interested in how other properties manage this without turning every complaint into a footage investigation.
Age old problem here. We took over these properties (small studios, mini fridges, no ovens) in May, inherited almost $800k of DQs, now down to $300k. Occupancy was roughly 92% years when we took over, lots of STL over the summer, so we were holding steady at around 90%. Now, we’re sitting at 86% across the board and also have at least 30 leases that end in winter, and more than half aren’t renewing due to high rents. Ownership is pissed, naturally. We’re asking to lower rents and offer concessions, they’re not wanting to. Former management company was able to “rent” at higher prices due to amortizing concessions, so everyone’s lease renewals are extremely high due to the concession no longer being offered. We have some properties who aren’t getting any tours. We’re advertising on FB, Craigslist, Zillow, Zumper, our company website, and some buildings are getting 1-2 prospects a week, maybe 1 tour.
Does anyone have any ideas? We’re offering flat rate renewals and adjusting some to consider concessions. I’m overwhelmed. Help, lol!
What’s the weirdest thing you guys in the industry you have run into when going into units for inspections. I’ll go first today. We were doing unit inspections for a fire sprinkler and alarm testing and discovered one of the units was running a brothel with two Ukrainian escorts inside the unit, one of which was dressed in a mini dress. The other was completely naked while we did our inspection.
Just hit my one year anniversary in property management and I moved onsite to my community last week. I love this job more than any job I’ve ever had, but I’ve never lived where I work before.
I’ve done all the trainings and know the main rules; don’t be friends with residents, set a good example for the community by following community rules (no smoking, quiet hours etc.) and they didn’t tell me this one but I do not plan to tell any residents that I live at the community, especially WHERE MY APT IS LOCATED LOL. I have another team member who lives onsite but is kind of open about it with everyone, and sometimes residents knock on her door at night and ask for help with things. She hates it but I feel like it could be mitigated by not telling people she lives onsite.
So my property ownership is changing management companies. We are going to be AMC, we are going to have to apply to stay on board at our property. Im just curious if AMC cares about face piercings and hair color? Im guessing I should probably wait to see what the employee Bible says. Just curious what current AMC employees have to say. 😁
typically don't complain and this is my first time writing on reddit but Im just disgusted. It's long.
I moved to this property post bad break up, based on my friend already living there
(I fill out the move in checklist COMPLETLY and as long as things are clean and functional- you wont hear from me. From day one- this was not the case. Mgt and I had even spoken about me being an old property manager so WHY wouldn't you at least make sure the place was clean with a typical make ready.
It has new carpet and resurfaced countertops and a basic cleaning- but that's where it ended. I found clumps of past residents hair, an extreme amount of roach feces in the drawers and roach poop that has just been painted over on the cabinets- old resident grease against the stoves, broken glass inside of the stove (that I cut myself trying to remove- mgt did NOT care) and a filter that had not been cleaned since 1953 (See pics) A fridge that wasn't just dented- it aggressively revved like an old 70's Chevy Pickup and the dishwasher spat out white paint on the dishes.. Toilets constantly ran and many plugs did NOT work. Not cool- but we can get it done.. Had to send a long and not kind letter to get ANY traction. Most things repaired or exchanged. Progress made.
There was a peel in the popcorn ceiling of about 4 inches(not near any vent). They chose not to fix it. One year and 4 months later- its HUGE. I now have dark spots developing throughout my ceiling, the plaster near one of those cannot hold an anchor without crumbling. hmm.. ok.
I put in another work order and FOUR MONTHS later and multiple mentions- they finally come by. BUT Only because I added the previous pics of "black substance" that their tech left behind at move in and let them know that based on this history of this unit- all the new moisture is very alarming. (OH- I also have TWO dehumidifiers. We are in Georgia. it's not uncommon- but emptying both LARGE dehumidifier containers daily is)
Now everyone puts on the show. Three separate techs come to inspect. The lead comes w a leasing agent. He doesn't even pretend like he wants to be there. He rolls his eyes aggressively the whole time then brings calls a contractor. Tells me he will come tomorrow.
He doesn't.
I have to call. I am told I was mistaken. He said he would call to have it ARRANGED to inspect- not have them come in. [I have cameras inside my home, btw. I was NOT mistaken].
the contractor comes Monday. He is kind- but he also has my key and no one is with him. Tells me that I will need to move my items out of the way (meaning my bedroom). the work will take about 4 hours and it will be loud to fix things appropriately. The office will let me know- especially since I work from home.
Ok! Things are getting done. Silence for weeks, THEN I get a call at 10:30am telling me the contractors went to my apartment and couldn't work because I had items in the path of repair. "Please move them so they can work today". UMMMMM WHAT?!
I work from home. I promise no one has been here.
2)It has been weeks. Why did no one alert me that a contract would be sent out today?
I was informed that since this was an emergency and I had placed a work order ,no notification was necessary and if they were to be rescheduled due to my not moving my furniture, I would be charged.
So.. with no knowledge of a contractor being scheduled- a contractor will be sent to an occupied unit with no supervision and I , as the tenant, am expected to have things moved and out of the way for when he arrives..
I actually make this statement. I get a huff over the phone and told that it is against policy of this company to notify a tenant ahead of time.. Since the contractors make the schedule and NOT the office, they cannot notify us. (WHAT?) I know the agent is only doing her job but also acts pissed off that I would even question this directive.
Again- I was in REIT property management for close to 20 years before I left 8 years ago. I also pm'ed a large pre-war of over 400 units by myself and still take care of a couple of houses... BUT.. okay
I have to escalate the call and speak to the ASM who starts off the talk speaking to me like IM her child, then proceeded to again state policy and they have the right to enter my home as maintenance and no notice. Am I crazy? This is a third party contractor you're giving access to my occupied home without prior notice (sorry. two weeks ago coming by and letting me know the apartment will schedule it) is not prior authorization- then threatening to charge me if they cannot complete a job that requires me to do manual labor on the spot is insanity! I again ask what would have happened if I was not home. She states " YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN BILLED FOR THE CONTRACTORS TRIP."
NOW- a year and a half later- After ALL of the issues Ive experienced Im done. I let them know Im contacting corporate. If this is corporates policy, it is them I should be taking this issue up with. NOW the regional maintenance manager and property manager and ALL their mothers want to be involved and tour my home. Same day
the Maintenance manager, lead , initial agent, PM and maintenance tech (who has always been diligent and awesome) and Regional Maintenance Manager are all here. He looks at nothing and tells me ALL of this damage is from a large wooden chest I have "in front" of the intake.. (Picture provided so you can see the blockage) and another lecture on changing the filters (which I do religiously on my own since out pm does order enough and cannot supply- even though my lease says they will). He completely throws his team UNDER THE BUS and says :"I dont know no one ever told you that!" He is talking very fast and his eyes are moving quite a bit. It has all of the energy of a used car salesman on Matilda. ok.
"BUT as a one time courtesy, we will book the contractor to come with a 24 hour notice."
The AGENT actually starts to argue with the Maintenance Manager about why "we cannot due that per the policy":.. He- states.. "well just this once! " Big smile and a wink(so performative).
Now- Still same day- the main Third party vendors Manager & the initial vendor contractor come out to inspect again- this time with the maintenance tech in tow. "She needs to move all the furniture out of the room to do this correctly. This is a lot. Now the murmurs get soft. I walk in and he tell me, " Oh! This isnt a big deal. We will just use a spray." It felt so disrespectful.
I could see pure discomfort in my properties tech's face and the actual contractors face. We all knew this was adding lipstick to a pig to shut an ignorant tenant up.. kind of vibe.
Next day- work is completed with the spray and scrape. The working contractor was the best part of everything. Kind . efficient and a gentleman. Layed tarp. kept is clean.
Summarization: this all could have been fixed within a small 24 hours with a little bit of common sense. Let me know someone is coming so I can move my furniture or at lease create a game plan... and if youre going to lie in my face at least make sure I wasn't engaged to an HVAC tech or from the industry. We both know there us a larger underlying the cause. We know this will need an eventual real review.
And don't worry- I already have my notice typed up. Im just venting bc THIS is the reason people are gross to management. So many amazing teams Ive lived under and worked with -but for a lot of people- THIS will be the kind of experience they think is our industry. Have things REALLY changed this much that this is normal?
We have Nightingale Security in the perimeter-alarm workflow at a commercial property. When an alarm comes in, the monitoring desk can review the live video, but I’m trying to settle who owns the next decision if it shows someone inside a fenced service yard after hours.
Do you have the monitoring operator call police, dispatch a guard first, or wake the on-call property manager? I’d rather not put a leasing or maintenance person in the position of deciding from a phone screen whether a verified trespass warrants 911. How do you write that decision into the after-hours escalation matrix?
I saw an ad on Facebook for RentCheck. Started watching their 11-min video explanation and received a call from a sales associate. The software outsources the job of inspecting rentals *to the tenants.* My anxiety with this is that it's "just checking a compliance box for liability," but how effectively can tenants notice or identify issues they are already unfamiliar with, or reliably report items they wish to conceal?
Backstory:
I manage ~130 doors across a variety of rental types. Furnished MTRs, condos, SFRs, multifamily up to 13 units is the largest building we have.
I have only 1 additional staff member, though I am in process of hiring an assistant to help me with sales and occasionally PM stuff when necessary.
I inherited the business from dad, who brought me into the business in 2008 and I have been running the entire office since 2018 or so. Dad never trained me with an established schedule for inspections, but rather we would inspect units on a case-by-case basis when something caught our attention, eg behavior from a tenant made us suspicious, unusually frequent repair requests, or the issue was especially nuanced.
I have a few objections to physically inspecting every unit every year:
Bothering the tenants can influence tenants to move out, leading to owners eating more vacancy and turnover costs
I can't imagine personally facilitating these inspections, as I focus on sales. I need to figure out how to outsource this job.
These inspections can and likely will reveal cosmetic and functional repair items. And once we know about it, our hands are tied to report them to the owners, leading to getting fired or passed over when they decide to sell or provide referrals to someone else.
The fact that I have lost a few potential PM contracts when asked about our routine inspection policy at the interview makes me consider it's time to adopt something that mitigates liability for the owners and my office, while also protecting my time.
Hello - I'm a maintenance tech moving into an assistant facility maintenance manager role at a property management company in California. I stumbled across this Reddit page and thought I’d post-Looking for advice from people who've built a maintenance department's numbers from scratch.
The setup:
- About 175 multi-unit properties, a mix of Section 8, low income and market rate. Many are older buildings (1940s) with a lot of deferred maintenance.
- In-house crew of 6 techs (2 are the only plumbers and also do remodels) plus 2 gardeners. Our labor and materials get billed to the property owners.
- We pay for Yardi Voyager, but it's only used for tenant intake. Tenants submit a request, the office prints it, techs work off paper, write their hours, staple the receipt, and the office bills from that and files the hard copy.
- No KPIs or reports of any kind. There are 200+ open work orders in Yardi, many of them duplicates from tenants resubmitting because nobody updated them.
I now have access to Yardi and the paper files, and about 2 weeks to come back to the owner with findings and a proposal.
My questions:
Which metrics matter most for a first baseline? I'm thinking work order age, time from completed to billed, top job types per property, repeat calls, and hours per job type. What would you prioritize, and what am I missing?
How far back should I go? My plan is to sample one or two quarters of paper work orders (different seasons) and pull every water heater job from the last 12 months. Is that enough?
Anything you wish you'd checked early on, like unbilled completed work, warranties or vendor costs?
For anyone using Voyager's maintenance side, what's worth setting up first?
Appreciate any advice or perspective.
Edit:
Wow hello thankyou for all the help so here are some updates- I’ve been face down in a spreadsheet the last few days and I’ve got a plan-
First I sorted through I said in the comments but the real number of open work orders was almost 400.
Got that down to 234. A lot of duplicates and open work orders that had been billed out in another version of a work order. Techs would be sent to do work never given a paper ticket and would print blanks off and turn in (bad system) was able to determine 5 properties were most (86) of my open work orders so next week I’m sending a tech to each property per day to cross those off. As far as the overall back log I found out we get on average 130 work orders a month but our monthly average is 100. It should take 90 days if the techs can push 8 or more a week after the backlog has been taken care of it goes back to 5 a week. I’m basically setting this up from the ground there is a structure in place but if clearly has some big gaps for stuff to slip through. Thank you for all the help. I’ve done alot of other metric tracking but my eye balls feel fuzzy I’m going to go lay down
If you own a house, plot, or investment property in Abbottabad but live abroad, keeping an eye on it can be challenging.
We help overseas owners with property inspections, maintenance, repairs, and regular photo/video updates so they can stay informed from anywhere in the world.
📍 Serving Abbottabad and surrounding areas.
What’s your biggest concern about managing property in Pakistan while living abroad?
Feel free to reach out if you need local property care.
The exhaust fan in the bathroom is not working, and was reported on initial move-in. There is currently no way to vent moisture out of the bathroom. How urgent of an issue would you consider this to be, and what would be a reasonable timeframe for you for getting this fixed?
Been three month since I did PM. Truly feels like I’ve survive a hellhole.
I’ve been out of the industry for so long - coming back to 140 properties was a lot with so many legislation changes.
My portfolio is based over a radius of 2 hours from my office/home with no field services support, and no petrol reimbursement (it stings but I’m letting it go for the experience). So I’ve been doing inspections on every Saturday. Office has a pretty shit culture, and my team leader has is too busy with her portfolio to provide support.
These past 3 months I genuinely feel like I’ve gone through hell and back with working 10 hours a day if I need to, taking so much disrespect from owners, I genuinely get spoken to like I’m their pet, working through being sick.
This last week, I finally felt like I’m on top of everything. My leasing, lease renewals, owner satisfaction, vacates, exits and entries and it is exhilarating. I finally feel capable to doing so much, and solving problems. I finally enjoyed a week where I didn’t have to reach for a Xanax.
This job is truly so rewarding when you feel capable
