It’s exciting times here at Douglas.
In one of my staff meetings with my maintenance department this month, I posed the question…
“What’s the worst part of being a landlord, and if you had a genie grant you a wish, how would you make it go away?”
After a few minutes of discussion, the answer was unanimous: having to make the phone call after a tenant moves out and left the property in poor condition.
We all agreed that it doesn’t happen often, but when it does, man is that a bad day. We’re not a call center like Comcast, or some big company who doesn’t give a you know what, rather we’re like family to our clients. Imagine calling your spouse and giving them bad news. Never a good day.
That’s when one of our guys, (credit to Dom) said, “Hey, why don’t we do some additional inspections and just charge to cover our time and cost?”
It was like a light bulb went off over my head. I thought, man, such a simple idea that can really change the way we do business.
It’s already so obvious to me, the amount of clients we bring on that say things like, “I don’t think they ever inspected my property” or “I’ve never gotten anything other than when my tenants move out and it’s too late.” So clearly, the industry standard doesn’t set the bar very high.
We consider ourselves the best professional rental property managers in the area (surprising I know), but this gives us the chance to make it even harder for the competition to catch up.
The video I filmed below was sent to a test group of our current clients, and it explains the details of the program and why it’s a no brainer for ANYONE who is a landlord. It’s essentially the best preventative maintenance plan we could think of.
As we’ve just started rolling out this plan, our property owners are already commenting on what a wonderful idea this is, and thankfully they see the benefit of this, just as we do.
I’m happy, I’m excited, it’s just another innovation my team has come up with to change the industry standard.
Cheers,
Kev
