Winning new property owners is only half the battle when it comes to growing your single-family business. If you’re only focused on marketing to new owners and forgetting the importance of building strong relationships with your existing owners, then you need to shift your focus.
Here are a few reasons why property managers lose clients:
1. Maintenance issues
Tenants aren’t the only ones who get upset when there are maintenance and maintenance vendor problems. You also stand the chance of losing owners as well. The real problem starts when property managers use vendors who are uninsured, uncertified, or just plain shady!
Property management can be a huge headache, but it can also be a huge opportunity when it comes to customer service. That’s why we do our best to help ensure tenants get the attention they need and a speedy response, so we don’t disappoint our owners with tenant turnover due to maintenance frustrations.
2. Property damage
The next biggest source of problems between the management company and owner is property damage. This is why it is key to have insurance in place that protects everyone: tenants, owners and property managers.
3. Poor communication
Your motto should be: Property managers who keep owners informed keep more owners.
That’s why we take full advantage of a mobile-friendly Owner Portal to provide owners access to statements, documents, data and a complete history of communications. We us it to keep owners aware of strenuous day-to-day efforts we’re making to find new tenants for unoccupied properties. And there is of course another great benefit to streamlined interaction between property manager and owner in addition to keeping owners happy: it greatly reduces phone calls and emails, freeing busy staff to concentrate on other duties.
Our owner portal also streamlines the moving of funds between owner and property manager, another pleasing bonus.
4. Vacant properties
Beyond protecting their properties, what property owners want most from you is to keep them rented and generating income. If they think you’re not working diligently to fill unoccupied properties, an owner will leave you in a minute. That’s why it’s critical to have a cost-effective, successful marketing program, and these days most of it happens on the Internet.
Bottom Line: Keep property owners happy!
There are more ways to lose owners than the ones listed above, of course. And some of them you can’t do anything about. But if you pay attention to these four and address your weak spots, you can be confident that those new property owners you’re winning aren’t merely replacing those you’re losing on the back end.
