FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

While it may seem like an easy task to do, managing your own rental property is a time consuming process, and can become more expensive over the long term. It doesn’t matter if you are physically located in Fayetteville, or if you are a geographically separated property owner. At Linchpin Property management, or over 36 years of real estate and legal experience makes use your best choice for your property management needs.

As an advantage we will:

• Relieve you of the time consuming day to day tasks of managing your property. This will allow you to consistently keep a positive cash flow, while ensuring that your rental property is not losing value.

• Ensure that your best interests are protected, and that you are not held liable for any violations of real estate laws that govern properties in North Carolina. As the only attorney led property management company in Fayetteville, we are in a unique position to make sure your interests are protected both in and out of court.

• Be the point of contact between you and the tenant, alleviating you from having to receive countless tenant complaints, as well as maintenance calls.

• We will work hard to make sure your property is rented. We will conduct all showings, provide you with the best possible tenant screening, and give you a tenant placement guarantee so you can have the peace of mind knowing that your tenants are the right ones for your property.

• We will make sure the maintenance and upkeep of your property is done consistently. From handling all tenant maintenance service calls and coordinating responsible vendors, to quarterly and bi-monthly inspections, you can rest assured that we will properly manage your asset.

Some property owners in Fayetteville with rental properties don’t understand the value of having a good property managment company to manage their properties. This is especially true for a homeowner who has little to no experience in managing properties, as well as investors.

Property management is a time consuming ordeal. It involves more than just collecting rent from your tenants. It requires a long-term commitment on the part of the individual managing your property. Property management also requires more than a cursory understanding of the laws and regulations that govern property management. Property management is more than a 9-5 job.

Geographically location is another key consideration. It is difficult to manage your own property when you are located in the same city as your rental investment. These issues are magnified when you are geographically separated from your property. As experienced property managers, we can’t count the number of horror stories we have heard from absentee property owners who could not manage their properties effectively, when they were not in the same area.

 

First and foremost, the decision to hire a property manager to manage your property, while a good one, is not a step you should take lightly.

It is important that you hire a property management company in Fayetteville that you feel comfortable with. Many property owners hire management companies based on recommendations made by friends, or even their former realtor at times. While this is a good starting point, you should make the effort to interview the property management company, and during this interview ask specific questions relative to the management of your property.

Here is a map you can follow:

First, write our your personal objectives and expectations. What are you looking to get out of a property management company? Some considerations include what is the tenant acquisition and screening process; what is the process for collecting rent; how are evictions taken care of; how are maintenance issues taken care of; what is the ratio of properties to propery managers (a ratio greater that 50 properties to property managers is too high, and is an indication that your property will not be taken care of effectively); and what is the frequency of communication with property owners. You can find an outline for your communication with property management company in the owner resources section on our website.

Second, you should do your own individual research on the property management company. Look at Google and Facebook reviews. What are other property owners and tenants saying about the management company. Reviews by tenants are just as important as those by landlords.

Along similar lines, look at the property management companies website. What does that website project. A professional website should include a number of key attributes including:

A clear mission statement and vision of the property management company. We serve the Fayetteville area, and most landlords understand the necessity of having a clear mission. If the property managment company does not have a clear vision, then what can you expect from them in terms of their quality of service.

A clear pricing structure on their website. Some property management companies don’t have a pricing structure on their website, or a clearly lay out their structure to potential landlords. Why is this process hidden from view, and where is the transparency?

A website that answers a lot of your questions upfront. The time spent in making a website which answers your questions upfront, is an indication of the degree of professionalism of the property management company.

Does the property management company try to help landlords and property owners in Fayetteville without seeking something in return? We believe in a value added approach. We believe that the more we educate property owners, the more they will be effective in the management of their own properties. Whether you decide to seek us out for property management services in Fayetteville is secondary to making sure you know how to manage your property effectively.

Last, what are the qualifications of the owners of the company, and what are the qualifications of the property managers. Qualifications go beyond having a real estate license. What other experience does your property management company owners have, and how does that assist in the management of your property?

These are some of the things you should look for in a property management company in Fayetteville. Click below for access to our property manager interview worksheet to get you started.

This is a question we get a lot from landlords who are dissatisfied with the services of the Fayetteville property management company representing them.

The answer we tell landlords is simple. We don’t know

But there are some questions you can ask yourself to make a subjective determination of whether or not your property management company is doing a good job:

• How often, and to what extent is your management company communicating with you? At Linchpin Property Management, we communicate with our landlord for all relevant issues. Additionally, we communicate monthly with our landlords, as well as provide detailed quarterly conferences with our landlords to discuss the state of your property, the way ahead in management, and provide suggestions to increase value.

• What is the overall satisfaction with your tenant? This is an often overlooked area. But the bottom line is if your tenant isn’t satisfied, then the tenant will not remain in your rental property, thereby decreasing your monthly cash flow.

• How responsive is your management company to your needs? Does your property management company respond back to your concerns in a timely manner, or is there a significant delay between the time you express your concerns, and the time your property manager gets back to you. At Linchpin Property Management, our target for responding to landlords for non-emergency issues is 1 hour. While we know somethings may come up that might prevent this from occurring, we will remain consistent in our goal of customer service satisfaction.

• Can your property management company articulate the value of their work? One of the things we find difficult to understand is why property management companies charge property owners a percentage of the rent for property management services. We have written about this extensively in the past, and you can find one of our articles BY CLICKING HERE, or looking at our breakdown in this FAQ section. The bottom line is why is the owner of a property that rents at $2000 a month, paying more for property management services than a property owner that rents at $800 a month, if they are receving THE SAME EXACT SERVICE!!! There is no justification for this, but if your property management company is charging based on this structure, it’s a major red flag.

Our pricing structure is simple. We charge a flat rate fee for our services, no matter what the rental price of your property.

Our fee structure is different than other property management companies in Fayetteville. Property Management companies in Fayetteville charge a percentage of your total rent amount for their property management service. This percentage is usually between 8-12%.

In our opinion, this pricing structure has no logical connection to the services you are receiving. Here is a quick example:

At a rate of 10%, the property owner in Fayetteville who rents his rental home for $2000 a month pays $200 a month in management fees. A property owner who rents his rental home for $1000 a month pays $100 a month in management fees.

You don’t have to be great at math to see that one owner is paying $100 less than the other, but they both are getting THE SAME EXACT SERVICE!

Not only that, this percentage based calculation takes monthly cash flow out of the hands of the property owner; does not allow the property owner to re-purpose the additional money; and doesn’t allow the property owner to reinvest the money in other areas.

At Linchpin Property Management,

You can read our blog about this topic, and why we think it is robbing property owners BY CLICKING HERE.

This is a million dollar question, and if we could answer this with a 100% yes, then we would be billionares.

The truth is, we use a very selective tenant screening process to find you a tenant that will exceed your expectations. The problem is that no matter how comprhensive the screening process, a very small minority of bad tenants will seep through the cracks.

What makes Linchpin Property Mangement different, and something that no other property management company in Fayetteville offers, is our approach to handling “bad tenants.”

Our property management company is the only property management company led by a retired military lawyer, who is licensed to practice law in North Carolina. What this means is that you will have an attorney ensuring each step of the tenant dispute process is handled in the legally correct manner. With other property management companies, your interest is represented by a property manager, who is not licensed to practice law.

Yes. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be worth the property management fee you pay.

Our approach to maintenance and upkeep is vastly different from other property management companies in Fayetteville.

First, we inspect your properly anywhere from 3 times a year, to up to 6 times a year depending on which management program you select.

Second, we provide you with detailed reporting on the condition of your property during these inspections, including photographs, and video.

Third, we schedule quarterly sessions with you, where we go over the condition of your property; improves we believe you can make to increase value; and the way ahead to help you gain more cash-flow from your rental property.

Fourth, we only deal with maintenance personnel who have a solid reputation in the community. When we have a maintenance issue, we solicit bids from a variety of vendors, and provide our recommendation to you as to which vendor we believe you should approve, based upon that vendors knowledge, training, and experience.

Last, we monitor all aspects of any repairs or improvements on your property, and serve as the liason between you and the tenant. We like to think of this as our boots on teh ground approach to property management.

Yes. As a property management company, we take care of everything involved in the day to day management of your property including:

marketing your property;
showing your property to potential tenants;
tenant screening;
tenant placement;
collection of rent;
coordinating maintenance and property upkeep;
overseeing eviction proceedings if necessary; and
providing you with a detailed end of month, and end of year financial statement reflecting all profits and loss, as well as itemized expenses for use in filing your taxes.

These are just a fee of the ways we handle the day to day financial and administrative tasks for your property, whether you are located in Fayetteville or anywhere else.

At Linchpin Property Management, our property managers manage up to a maximum of 75 properties, the lowest manager to property ratio in Fayetteville.

Property managers in Fayetteville, employed at other property management companies, often manage up to 150 properties. The property management company’s justification is that property management software allows the property manager to handle more properties.  Property managers who manage a large volumn of properties become easily burned out.  What this means is that your property is not receiving the attention it deserves, which will ultimately lead to damages to your property because of neglect, lengthy court proceedings, wasting your time, and a decrease in the overall value of your investment. 

We use one of the top property management software systems, with the capacity to handle 10’s of thousands of properties, and we don’t believe software should be a substitute for customer care.
Additionally, we believe a lower property manager to property ratio affords the property manager the opportunity to focus on the important metrics that matter for the management of your property.

At Linchpin Property Management, we pride ourselves on being at the forefront, and head and shoulders above other property management companies in Fayetteville, of all of the technological advances to assist in managing your property.

We firmly believe, however, that technology shouldn’t be used as a substitute for old fashioned landlord customer service and tenant satisfaction.

Additionally, we don’t believe, as some property management companies in Fayetteville do, that technology should be used to increase the workload of property managers by giving them more properties than what we believe is manageable. Even with the use of technology to facilitate our services, we cap our property manager to property ratio at 75, the lowest in Fayetteville and the surrounding area.

Currently we use Buildium as our property management software. Buildium enables us to collect rents seamlessly and electronically; forward rental payments to landlords on the following business day; screen tenant applications and conduct background checks effortlessly; send and receive maintenance requests and correspondence; create automated workflows for our staff members and maintenance personnel; provide you with a detailed report of the financial health of your property monthly and yearly; and allow you to view all details of your property whenever you want.

The good thing about Buildium is that you have access to all of the information we have, and can view it from your computer, or on the Buildium App. You will never be left in the dark.

 

We have an eight step process to marketing your property. Our approach is a little different than most property management companies in Fayetteville, based on our understanding of the best practices that have evolved over the more than 20 years we have been in real estate, to give you the best results possible outcome for your property.

First, we ensure that high quality photos are taken of your property. Photos are the first thing that potential tenants see, and they allow them to narrow down their property search. If you don’t have high quality photos of your property, you are operating at a disadvantage.

Second, if you decide, we will provide you with a 360 degree walk through of your property. A 360 degree walk through is the current gold standard in marketing your property. It gives the potential tenant the opportunity to have a feeling of actually visiting your property. Nationwide data suggests that the 360 degree walk through leads to a higher tenant conversion rate.

Third, we ensure your property is properly priced by conducting a detailed Comparative Market Analysis. Unlike most property management companies, we don’t solely rely on the computer generated number, because the actual rental value of your property can be higher than the average, and thus giving you more cash flow in your pocket.

Fourth, we list your property in the MLS. The MLS is the system used by realtors to find properties for rent. This will enable us to rent your property, even if we aren’t the management company with the prospective tenant. In other words, other realtors will be able to see your property for rent, inform us of a potential client, and then we will conduct the showing.

Fifth, we market your property 35 of the major rental property search engines. Doing this gives a wider exposure to potential tenants, and allows tenants to contact us when they see your property

Sixth, we make a dedicated website landing page for your property. What a dedicated landing page does is allows us to market your property exclusively to potential tenants. In this way, your property is not lost in the shuffle of other properties, and can stand out.

Seventh, we buy ads not only in Fayetteville, North Carolina, but also anywhere potential tenants may be. For properties managed in the Fayetteville area, this means marketing at every major military installation, so your property can be seen by service members PCSing to the Fort Bragg area.

Last, we follow up on every potential lead for your property. If a potential tenant has viewed your property, the potential tenant will receive a follow up email from us specific to your property. This allows us to keep your property fresh in their mind, allows the tenant to ask follow up questions, and fosters a more fruitful relationship between us and the tenant, increasing tenant satisfaction.

Yes. We are a Veteran Owned Small Business.

One of our founders is a recently retired Army attorney. As a JAG, he saw, and heard, first hand all of the horrible ways landlords and tenants were treated by their property management companies.

After retirement at Fort Bragg, he decided to partner with his mother, who has over 20 years in real estate and property management in the Fayetteville area, to found Linchpin Property Management.

Both of their dissatisfaction with the predatory practices, maltreatment of property owners, and overall neglectful property management were their catalyst for the development of a better property management solution.