As a landlord and rental property owner, you have a myriad of decisions to make. For the purpose of this article, I wanted to focus on two that have far reaching implications, especially for the small landlord:

1. How far away is too far, when buying a rental property?
2. How to handle repair calls– are you “hands on” or “hands off?”

I recently received a “repair” call from a tenant who lives about 10 minutes away from me. The call came in about five of nine at night and I was informed that the garbage disposal in their unit wasn’t working. They “hadn’t done anything to break it”, but when they turned it on, the disposal just hummed and the blades were frozen. They said they were familiar with how the garbage disposal worked (in fact they had successfully used one in their current unit for the past three years) and tried to get it running, but couldn’t. I told them I’d be over the next morning and take a look at it or send a repair man out to evaluate the situation and get it fixed. Generally, I call one of my handymen or contractors whenever possible to fix complicated plumbing, carpentry, electrical and HVAC issues. Since I was going to be pressed for time that next day, I decided that this was going to be the first call to Mr. Handyman and subsequently my first property repair expense of the New Year.

I woke up about four o’clock the next morning, my mind racing around the issues that I had to tackle in just a few short hours. Namely, the time I’d need to spend trying to coordinate a handyman and the unknown cost that I stood to incur. As I pondered these issues, I thought maybe the tenant really didn’t know as much about garbage disposals as they thought and decided to go take a look for myself later that morning. Although I didn’t know all that much about garbage disposals, and didn’t have much time to waste that day, I had an educated guess as to what the problem might be. Figuring it would only take less than half an hour of my time, and if I was right, would probably be no more time than the calls I’d be making to the handyman and the tenant anyway, I got to their unit around noon. I was armed with only one small tool that is usually the only hope a layman has to repair a garbage disposal– an Allen Wrench. After fitting the wrench into the bottom hole of the disposal and working free whatever was jamming the blades, sure enough, the disposal began working again! With a quick tutorial and providing the wrench to the tenant as a gift, I was on my way. Total time spent on the repair- approximately 2 minutes. (The tenant later admitted that some of the fish tank gravel that they had been cleaning might have fallen into the disposal and been responsible for the jam).

Why do I relay this story to you? Two important aspects of landlording are time and money.

Your time is spent in two ways: travelling to and from your property and time at your property. The total time I spent that day was about twenty two minutes. Now, if the property had been forty-five minutes away, I would have spent over an hour and a half between commuting back and forth and fixing the problem.

Your money is also an important part of the business. I assume you’re not just doing it for free and for fun. If I would have called a repair man, what would it have cost me? For him to unjam the thing, it would have at least been a service call… $85? Could he have said it needed replacement and charged me for the extra time and the new garbage disposal? Who knows, but since I knew that it was worth trying to take a look at myself, I saved a lot of potential repair money by at least checking things out before I called the handyman.

Essentially, my suggestions are:

• Choose properties that are within a comfortable distance from where you live/work. Time spent commuting to them is time wasted.
• I don’t believe in “hands off” landlording and I am not skilled enough, or have enough time, to be totally “hands on” with repairs, either. The fact is, as a landlord and rental property owner, I need to know my properties, my tenants, and my business. You can save time, money and have a more efficient business by figuring out when to “do it yourself” and when to “call in the professionals.” The best landlords know when they need to use one or the other, but chances are over the course of the year they use both. What did you say… property manager? YOU are your BEST property manager… never think that you can get out of that responsibility without SEVERELY affecting your cash flow. No one will ever care more about your property and it’s value than you will!

Steven Boorstein

Author/Landlord

http://www.howtobuyrentalproperty.com/

https://www.managerentalproperty.com/