The Successful Landlord Blog

Why oh why, is it necessary to beg, plead, cajole and socially maneuver to get certain contractors to come out to work here in Brevard County, FL? If this is typical, someone please let me know by leaving a comment.
I was recently out at a one of our rentals for something unrelated and the tenant mentioned that certain electrical outlets and light fittings were not working. After checking the obvious things like tripped breakers in the electrical panel and broken switches, I determined that I’m in need of the services of a professional electrician.

Getting an electrician to come out, however, is another story. So far, I’ve had electricians say that they will be there at a certain time and not show up. I’ve also had one electrician say he can’t make it out for a full month.

I mean really, I will pay for the services, on the spot if necessary, but this is getting pretty ridiculous. Brevard County is still growing and I think that when enough of the general public starts demanding decent service, the contractors will fall into line….hopefully.

For a while now I have been unhappy with one of the three lawn service companies that we use to maintain the yards of the rental houses.

This lawn service in particular is the worst at customer service not to mention they do a completely half-assed job. Case in point, I drove by the property one time and they had not weed-whacked the grass next to the house in so long that the grass was about three feet high and growing up the side of the house.

When I call to complain, they do not return calls and sometimes, only sometimes, do they actually remedy the problem. Not to mention, the owner, who actually works on the crew, has never so much as come to the door to introduce himself after he bought the lawn service business from my old lawn guy.
If I need to communicate with him, it’s usually by mail and there is no response. If he needs to communicate with his customers he does the following:

If he needs to change his contact phone number (what’s the point?), he will change it on the bill heading and not take the time to write a note or highlight the fact that the number has changed.

If he wants to let his customers know to write checks to him personally rather then to the business name, he has a rubber stamp made and stamps all the invoices before they go out.

There’s something to be said for doing a little public relations sometimes. For instance, in my other job, I do most of my work remotely. My customers are about 100 miles away on average. Yet, about every couple of months, I find a way to stop in to their offices so that they can see my face and interact with me on a personal level. It’s just so that they know who they’re sending their checks to. It makes them feel warm and fuzzy (I think) to see me every so often and so far, it’s worked out OK.

This post is going to be kind of technology heavy so if you’re not so inclined, you can stop reading now. I won’t be offended, believe me.
Anyway, in the past I’ve had problems with tenants who seem to think that it’s OK for them to call my cell phone at all hours of the day and night. They probably do this because they think that my cell phone is the most direct route to contact me and they would like an answer to their question or problem RIGHT NOW. Never mind that they can’t seem to “remember” that at the beginning of the month, rent is due and when I call to find out where it is, they are no where to be found, but no, they want a response RIGHT NOW, so….

I might mention by-the-way that I NEVER give tenants or contractors my cell phone number but sometimes I forget to change the setting on my phone so that it displays “Private Caller” on their caller-id display and so they think that they are being “assertive” by calling my cell phone. I have an office number for them to call which pages me immediately and I call them back….usually immediately.

Case in point, I used to own a seasonal rental house near the beach a few years ago. A  woman who rented the house for about two months was a little bit of a kook. Something about needing her 3 Labrador Retrievers with her because they “help her write” some book that she was writing. Whatever. She proceeded to call me on my cell phone at 11:00pm on a Saturday night (while I was out at a restaurant no less) to ask me how to use the VCR (!!!) WTF!?

Anyway, I recently started using a free software package called Asterisk. Asterisk will turn an old computer that you may have laying around into a free private-branch exchange (PBX). It can behave like a simple office phone system but it can also give you the ability to “appear” to be calling from somewhere (the office) when you’re really placing the call from elsewhere (your cell phone).

It’s really neat! In addition to this functionality, you can also set it up to forward calls from a certain number to something called a softphone which is basically a piece of software which behaves like a phone.

Theoretically, you could be anywhere in the world and attached to the internet, where you could receive and place calls from a number local to the caller.

So today I got a call from the older lady who lives across the street from one of our rental houses. She was calling to ask me to please do something with the yard at the rental because it’s getting very overgrown, etc. and it’s “breaking her heart and she has to look at it everyday.”

I should explain that this rental house used to be the home of some good friends of hers, who we bought the house from because they were getting too old to deal with it. Back in 2004, a hurricane had just blown through and took some roof shingles and siding off the house and they didn’t want to fix the damage.

I should also explain that these people bought these houses back in the 1970′s when they had just retired from their single company careers up north (railroad, IBM, etc.). I know that there is more pride-in-ownership when you own a home as opposed to rent it, but I think that these people were just anal-retentive about maintenance and appearance.

Apparently, back in the day, they used to rush out and do stuff like cut the grass when it got to 1.25 inches tall, trim shrubs when they started looking just a little bit scraggly and paint the house every year. Because that’s what you did when you were Beaver Cleaver’s parents.
Well, what I’ve been doing is trying to get the yard in line with the rest of our rentals in that, the ground covering of the entire yard is basically weeds. When we get torrential rains in the summertime, the yard gets really green and lush “looking.” When the weather gets really hot and we have near drought conditions, the yard turns brown. And then at the slightest hint of humidity, the yard turns back green again.

What was covering the ground at this house was what is called St. Augustine grass which is a strain of grass that thrives in saltier environments (like near the beach) and generally damp environments. It grows thick and green when a) there is plenty of water b) it is not stressed by drought or bugs and c) it is fertilized regularly. Now what happened in the past was that the people that owned the house would irrigate the lawn 3 times a week and hired a lawn treatment service to spray all kinds of chemicals to keep bugs away so as a result the lawn was perfect.

What happened when we put tenants in the house was that they parked cars on the grass and the wonderful lawn-maintenance people, who we pay, destroyed the irrigation system with their huge lawnmowers, so the grass died! Duh!

All it needs now is for a different lawn guy (because the regular ones don’t trim shrubs) to go in there and clean it up. In time, it will be in line and all will be fine. However, I had to listen to this neighbor whine to me on the phone this morning about how the yard is “breaking her heart” whenever she looks at it. But I need to listen to this because when the tenants start shooting off fireworks INSIDE THE HOUSE, I need her to call me, so we have to stay friendly.

I spoke with the painter a couple of days ago and he mentioned that he won’t be able to get to the patching job done for two more weeks due to an injury which is fine. Like I mentioned before, the tenants have been waiting for about two months, so two more weeks isn’t going to hurt.

The lawn guy called today to say that the yard is pretty much a mess and he just doesn’t have time to do it right now. That’s fine but that yard needs some work.

On another note, rents are due tomorrow. I can’t wait to hear the excuses tomorrow.