I have an income property that is managed by a company hired by the owner's association. Maybe they are the best that can be found in that area and maybe not, but I am not awfully happy with them. It is probably the fault of the owner's association, however, not the management company, but I still don't think they are handling it very well.
The property in question was languishing on the market almost a year when I bought it back in the 90's and then it quadrupled in value. In today's market it is hard to say what it is worth, but it is still definitely worth more than I paid for it. The problem is that when I bought the condo it was in a gated community, with a live patrol 24/7. Now it isn't. I would have cut costs anywhere else, but not security. Minutes after they stopped the patrols we had people jumping the fence. It is a high fence, too. Some of the fence jumpers were actually residents wanting a short cut to the fast food place on the other side of the wall. But others were coming in from the outside for reasons less innocuous. So I expected the property managers to call the police when they saw outsiders crawling over the wall. They said they could not do that. They said I could call the police if I wanted to, but they were prohibited. Huh? If I were there, I would tell the trespassers to go away myself. I thought the whole idea of having property managers was that they would do that in my absence. Wrong.
I wonder if they have the same problem elsewhere. I would like to ask a Property Manager in Cincinnati if they allow people to jump the fences there. Or if they just plaster the cracks and paint it over and pretend that was normal wear and tear -- while passing the cost of the repairs along to the owners.
It is a pretty little condo in a resort community, but I think our property values would hold better, even in this economy, with better management.
Sometimes I allow people to spam my posts with related ads, but since this is a paid post I had to remove the comments left by a property management company in NC, who frankly, I think, should have known better.
Posted by: Janet Ann | March 01, 2010 at 03:39 PM