It was a sunny Sunday afternoon and I was in my car with my kids to get some exercise in. I wanted to shoot some hoops, so I convinced my kids they did too. It was on.
We parked behind a local school and walked over to where the basketball court was on the other side of it; there was also a small playground 50 yards behind the court. My son and I wanted to play basketball. My daughter also initially wanted to play until she didn’t… then she wandered over to the playground.
It became a volley of walking from the basketball court to the playground and then back again. “Dad! Come see this!” “Dad! Over here!”
On my sixth trip back to the playground, I realized that if I walked far enough into the playground, I could get the sight view past the school to see my car in the distance (which was completely obscured from the basketball court). And I saw a strange man walking suspiciously around my car. I say “suspiciously” because there were no other cars there. What was he doing? He was looking into my windows and did not know he was being watched. How suspenseful! And what to do?
I went through the options. I could yell and let him know I saw him. That would probably prevent any theft or damage to my car. Yawn & boring.
Or I could go (undetected) back to the basketball courts, stash my kids in the bushes, and then sneak around to potentially catch the stranger breaking into my car. Once he broke glass, I could ambush and subdue him; in a perfect world, I could handcuff him with the zip ties in the back of my car. Then I could call 911 and the Charlotte Observer letting them know that a “local hero” had one criminal on ice waiting for them- no charge.
That would be awesome unless… the stranger was bigger than me, good at fighting, and also included kidnapping as part of his criminal repertoire. Then he might drive away in my car with my kids, and leave me bleeding on the pavement. That would be a major fail and one that would be difficult to explain to my wife.
Seriously, what outcome did I want? Though the hero thing sounded pretty good, I needed to get real for a minute. Despite the appeal of potentially getting a key to the city from Mayor Lyles, what was going to be the cost? Realistically, if all went close to best-case scenario (which it rarely does), I’d have a busted car window (that I’d have to pay for and deal with), be waiting a while for the cops to show up (with my knee in a guy’s back who is probably cussing me out), and be babysitting two young children at the same time. That did not seem like a great outcome, even with the best-case scenario.
To me, property management is about creating good outcomes for our clients; the best outcomes come from tenants who stick around a while and consistently:
- Pay the rent
- Maintain the property
- Get along with their neighbors
We recently got a call from the HOA of one of our condo units where they accused our tenants of unkempt living, namely having a unit so disgusting that bugs where infiltrating the homes of neighboring tenants. This was clearly a violation of #2 and #3 above. This was not good, if it was true. They wanted us to evict the tenants immediately (and if we didn’t, they were sending a Sheriff that night to do so).
Despite the sheer illegality and impracticality of such a threat (landlords wish it was this easy to evict bad tenants- “oh, just call the local Sheriff and have him go over the same day to remove them…”), what outcome did we really want? Did we want to remove paying tenants who never had any prior issues? Of course not. We wanted the tenants to correct any cleanliness issues, if applicable, and then continue to stay and pay rent.
So we contacted the tenants and explained what the HOA alleged. Then we let them know we’d be there for an inspection the next afternoon to ensure the HOA there was no issue. The tenants understood and said there was no problem with that.
The next day, our inspection showed a very clean unit. We thanked the tenants and reported the findings to the HOA. There haven’t been any issues since.
The desired outcome was to keep the tenants, not to try to play “gotcha” to catch them violating the lease. That would put ourselves in a position where we would need to make a decision that no one wanted to make- the costly removal of paying tenants.
Viewing issues from a desired outcome perspective, as opposed to the initial bravado impulse, can help make decision-making more clear. It may be “boring”, but “boring” property management is typically the most effective and keeps the checks coming.
Postscript: So I yelled something at the guy at my car and he left. My son hit some shots, my daughter hit the swings, and then we left (unscathed) in a non-damaged car. Yawn…
Happy Landlording!
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