Property managers have a lot of things under their purview. Different types of things break or need to be
serviced on a rental home. Most are
handled by specialists in some regard who know how to work within the confines
of what landlords require (no gold-plated toilets, please). And sometimes it can be tough to find
specialists who are a good fit.
One of the vendors that has historically been a difficult
find for BDF Realty is a good, reliable lawn company. When the service area is as large as the
Charlotte-Metro area, it’s understandable that not every company works everywhere
we have rental homes; it’s tough to justify driving 20 minutes to mow one stray
lawn! Then properties are constantly in
flux (vacant ones need to be mowed and rented ones don’t, and this changes
constantly); this can be administratively difficult to keep straight as their
weekly routes need to be constantly updated due to our needs. Not being able to work due to rainy days adds
another wrinkle of difficulty to keeping yards look consistently good. Finding one, let alone several, companies
that can accommodate us has been challenging.
Then they need to be reasonably priced, reliable, friendly, have sound
accounting to boot!
In my quest I stumbled on to a lawn company and met with the
owner. He was a nice guy, easy to talk
to. He ran a smaller shop and thought he
could help us out. We started to send
him our properties.
Shortly after, I noticed that I stopped hearing from him
except when he acknowledged he received our house changes and sent us invoices. Occasionally, he would let me know he saw
something askew at a house that we might want to check out. But for the most part, he went dark on BDF
Realty.
But the yards were always mowed! We stopped getting calls from tenants and
agents complaining about overgrown lawns that hadn’t been cut for weeks. The bills showed up on time and
accurately. We weren’t paying for lawns
that were still on the schedule when they had previously been taken off the
master list. The landscaping part of the
business seemed to be quietly humming along.
If I hadn’t been in the business of trying to find good lawn
companies for so long, I might have thought something was wrong. “Why don’t I hear from this guy? Why do we pay him so much money? Should I be pitting another lawn company
against him? What does he even do that’s
so special?” But experience and age gave
me appreciation on what a gift this peace of mind was. He really kept us clean from a lawn service
perspective. I appreciated it!
From a Charlotte property
management perspective, this is what we aim for. We want to be like our lawn service provider,
keeping all of our clients clean. The
question of “What do you even do?” is one I hope every client has. That usually means that the rent comes in every
month, tenant leases are regularly extended, house turns are smooth, tenants
are calm and satisfied, and the property management side of the business is
quietly humming along. When it looks
easy from the outside, it’s running as designed.
Speaking of… A special “Thanksgiving” shoutout to our
vendors who do such tireless, great work every day for our tenants, clients,
and us. I could ask the question, but I
know what you do!
And a thank you, as always, to our clients- if it weren’t
for you, there would be no BDF Realty.
Happy Thanksgiving & Happy Landlording!
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