Urban City Rentals Inc. provides professional rental property leasing and management services for unfurnished strata titled apartments, condominiums, lofts and townhouses in the metro downtown Vancouver area Richmond and Burnaby BC.
Blog entries categorized under Property Management
Posted by Urban City Rentals
Urban City Rentals
Urban City Rentals Inc. provides professional rental property leasing and manage
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on Wednesday, 16 February 2011
in Property Management
Urban City Rental's has launched it's brand new Live Chat service available to for all tenant prospects and clients alike! In our efforts to provide superior rental property management and tenant placement services to our investment rental property clients, our Live Chat offering aims to provide immediate real time contact with potential tenants to maximize exposure and market responsiveness. With the number of competing rental properties on the market, our Live Chat services can pro-actively engage with our website visitors which increases the response rate from viewers, resulting in quicker rental turnaround for your investment property rental. For more information on our Tenant Placement and Rental Property Management Rates and Fees - call Urban City Rentals today at 604-677-7369 and speak to one of our licensed and experienced property managers to discuss your rental needs today!
Investment Property - Unfurnished or furnished?
Posted by Urban City Rentals
Urban City Rentals
Urban City Rentals Inc. provides professional rental property leasing and manage
User is currently offline
on Friday, 11 February 2011
in Property Management
One
question we often receive at Urban City Rentals from investment property owners
is whether to rent their property as an unfurnished or furnished option.
If your
property is a waterfront suite with exclusive views and top end furnishings, it
may do well as an furnished rental.
However, in
our experience, renting an investment property as unfurnished is often the best
long term strategy for the following reasons:
-
Unfurnished rentals are generally longer term (1+ years minimum), leading to
less turnover.
- Tenants
tend to treat the property better when they settle in long term with their own
furnishings.
- Less
overall vacancy (compared to 30% annual vacancy for furnished properties).
- Minimize
the wear and tear from tenant turnover as furnished rentals tend to be short
term (1-3/6 months).
- Tenants
seeking furnished rentals are typically from out of country, making it more
difficult to effectively screen and qualify.
Also, when
considering the addtional expenses involved with running a furnished property
(linens, plate, glassware, utensils, bedding, etc) PLUS utilities (Hydro,
cable, internet, phone) while also factoring in the high potential for vacancy
and increased wear and tear on your clients investment property, it is clear
why we always recommend to our clients at Urban City Rentals to rent their
investment properties as an unfurnished option!
If you have
investment buyers who are looking for professional tenant placement and rental
property management services, please contact Urban City Rentals!
- Urban
City Rentals does not provide trading services
- Urban
City Rentals acts as a partner, complimenting your trading service activities
- Our
professional approach and client assistance will always reflect positively on
your service
- Your
clients' future purchase and sale requirements will always be referred back to
you
- You will
find our years of experience and expertise in all tenancy matters invaluable
- Maximize
your clients' return on investment
Please call
Urban City Rentals at 604-261-4560 or email
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or visit
our website at http://www.urbancityrentals.com
for more information.
The 5 Steps of Screening Tenants
Posted by Urban City Rentals
Urban City Rentals
Urban City Rentals Inc. provides professional rental property leasing and manage
User is currently offline
on Saturday, 15 January 2011
in Property Management
I always say that "95% of your tenant problems can be eliminated in
the screening process." If you're like me, you probably find it
difficult to relax when you have vacancies. So getting it rented is the
main idea, right? Well, from now on, lets say "getting it rented to a
properly qualified tenant is the main idea."
Below is what I call The 5 Steps of Screening Tenants.
STEP 1: First Contact
From the very first contact
with the tenant, the screening process has begun. Whether you are the
landlord, real estate agent or property manager, the same still holds
true.
First Contact is usually by telephone, so you need to ask
the right qualifying questions in order to decide if you should proceed
to step 2. Advise customers of your up front rent and security deposit
requirements and other important facts regarding the rental that may
help disqualify the prospect.
I suggest you make a list or
prospect card of questions to ask and have it handy while you conduct
your first contact interview. For example:
- Name:
- Phone:
- Reason for Moving:
- # of People & Relationship to You:
- Intended Rental Term:
- Occupancy Date:
- Pets:
- Smoking:
- Credit:
- Landlord Reference?
Please note that anyone who has a problem answering your questions
(as long as you ask them politely), probably will not qualify for your
rental. Serious customers want to make a good impression on you and
should be happy to answer your questions. This process can save you and
customers a lot of time and trouble.
STEP 2: Showing the Property
From landlords to real
estate agents, we all have our own style in showing the rental. I think
we all need to be aware of certain telltale signs to watch for while
evaluating your prospective new tenants.
1. Appearance. Is the
prospect neat and clean? Did he or she make an attempt to make a good
impression? In most cases, an unkempt person keeps an unkempt lifestyle
and home. 2. Car. Does the prospect have a nice car? Is it clean?
Although we can't judge people by their car, we should take note of it
along with other details. 3. Attitude & Manners. Does this
prospect behave respectfully? Does he or she show indications of being
difficult to deal with in the future? Did the prospect wipe his or her
feet when stepping into the house? Did the prospect walk into the rental
while smoking? You can learn a lot about people even before speaking to
them. Sometimes it helps to pay attention to details. 4.
Criticizing the property. Are the prospects pointing out legitimate
concerns, or are they trying to come up with items to negotiate price?
5. Yes or No? Can the prospect make the decision now or will they have
to think about it? If they know now that they want your rental, did the
prospect come ready to give you a deposit and fill out an application?
STEP 3: The Application Process
The first thing you need
is a quality rental application. Let the applicant know that his or her
application will be considered along with others, and you will notify
the applicant once a decision is made. Advise the applicant(s) that it
is very important to fill out the application as completely as possible.
If you (and I recommend you do) run a credit report on the applicant, I
suggest you be sure to collect a screening fee. This is a provision in
the The LPA Rental Application.
Inform your prospective tenant
that the application must be returned as soon as possible to avoid the
risk of losing the rental to a competing prospect.
Review and
verify the application thoroughly and look for inconsistencies and "red
flags". When you are satisfied, you will proceed to approving your new
tenant in step 4.
STEP 4: The Approval Process
This is usually a fun part,
but keep in mind that you are still screening the applicant while
preparing him or her for the next step. I like to congratulate the
applicant on being approved and let them know they came in 1st place.
Also, let them know if you made any special concessions just for them,
such as overlooking minor credit infractions, etc.
This process
is also an opportunity for you to make sure the applicant can and will
deliver. Set the time, date and place for your lease signing. Instruct
the applicant(s) to bring the proper amounts of monies, identification
(if you don't already have it), and how you prefer to be paid. (Check*,
money order or cash)
* Be sure to tell your new tenants that possession or keys will be given only after checks have cleared.
STEP 5: The Lease Signing
It is very important that you
have a quality residential lease. You'd be surprised at how many people
would just sign a lease without reading it! And I don't just mean
tenants! I believe it is crucial to read the entire lease with the
tenants at a lease signing. It is your agreement with them. Shouldn't
you both know what is really being agreed to? As you read the terms of
the lease with the tenants, you will be able to conduct your 5th and
final step of screening. Does the tenant argue on every item? Is the
late charge an issue? And so on.
Of course, if you are unhappy
with how your prospect responds to you and/or your lease, you must not
rent to this person. I believe: "It is better to have NO tenant than it
is to have the wrong tenant."
John Nuzzolese The Landlord Protection Agency http://www.theLPA.com
Online Virtual Video Tours for Rental Properties
Posted by Urban City Rentals
Urban City Rentals
Urban City Rentals Inc. provides professional rental property leasing and manage
User is currently offline
on Tuesday, 04 January 2011
in Property Management
As a valued added service to all our residential rental property management clients, we provide complimentary professional production of online virtual video tours for every rental property listed through Urban City Rentals! Video tours allow prospective tenants the ability to view a live look into the property while professionally showcasing properties to attract the best tenants for our owners. By offering live video tours, your rental property can be rented for much higher values and more quickly, resulting in more profits and rental income for your investment property.
Likewise, through video Urban City Rentals is also able to provide owners of rental properties with a live documentation of the condition of their property to minimize any disputes over any required repairs due to damages caused by tenants. Many rental property management companies charge close to $500 for such a service (if they do at all) but at Urban City Rentals, we include this service free of charge for all tenant placement and full rental management clients. Our objective is to rent your suite at the best possible price in the shortest amount of time and online video tours have proven to be the most effective method of achieving successful results.
View Urban City Rental's Youtube video page at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/urbancityrentals
Social Media Marketing and Rental Property Management
Posted by Urban City Rentals
Urban City Rentals
Urban City Rentals Inc. provides professional rental property leasing and manage
User is currently offline
on Tuesday, 14 December 2010
in Property Management
At Urban City Rentals, our continued efforts to leverage the power of social media (ie. Facebook, Twitter, etc) has resulted in immediate returns for many of our investment real estate clients. By dedicating resources to building an extensive reach through social media, Urban City Rentals has created a solid Facebook fan base and a loyal group of Twitter followers. By capitalizing on the popularity of social media to reach tenant prospects, partners, clients, industry leaders and more our efforts has resulted in tangible results and improved execution of our rental property leasing and marketing efforts.
Follow Urban City Rentals on Facebook and Twitter here:
http://www.facebook.com/urbancityrentals
http://www.twitter.com/urbancityrental
Tags: Burnaby, Facebook, Property Alert, Property Leasing, Property Management, Rental Management, Richmond, Social Media, Tenant Placement, Twitter, Vancouver
Tricks and Cons Tenants Use
Posted by Urban City Rentals
Urban City Rentals
Urban City Rentals Inc. provides professional rental property leasing and manage
User is currently offline
on Monday, 01 November 2010
in Property Management
Most of the sneaky little
tricks listed below can easily be thwarted with proper tenant screening
and a little landlord tenant knowledge.
1. The Old "Fake Credit Report" Trick:
With today’s computer technology, it is quite easy for a tenant to
fake a credit report. Anyone can get a free copy of their own credit
report online and make a few “modifications” on it before printing it
out and presenting it to an innocent, unsuspecting and impressed
landlord.
2. The Old "Totally Fake Identity" Trick with great credit report:
Fake IDs are sold to under aged kids who want to get into bars all
over the country. It is easy enough for a con-man tenant to get a fake
ID to match his friend’s or relative’s credit report and present
him/herself as that person. It is a good idea to check IDs carefully and
verify as much information in that person’s name as possible.
3. The Old "I'm a victim of Identity Theft" Trick:
A popular excuse for a bad credit report. Blame it on identity theft!
4. The Old "My spouse ruined my Credit" Trick:
A popular excuse for divorced deadbeats. Blame it on the Ex!
5. The Old "Fake social security #" Trick:
Many fraudster rental applicants present fake social security numbers
on their rental application. Often it is their child’s or a made up
number that brings incorrect or no results. When asked for an
explanation, they may pretend they don’t understand why this happened.
6. The Old "Self Employed with fake income records" Trick:
Self employed tenants are among the most difficult references to
verify. Why, because as their own boss, the tenant prospect is giving
you his own references on himself. Is it possible he might exaggerate
his success and income and create corresponding exaggerated reference
material? You bet it is!
7. The Old "Threaten the Landlord with a Discrimination Suit" Trick:
A common tactic of a disgruntled rental reject. This trick works on many scared inexperienced landlords.
8. The Old "Move In FREE" Trick:
The tenant shops rentals with desperate landlords who offer a free
first month and no security deposit. They live free until they get tired
of stringing the poor sucker along.
9. The Old "This place needs work" Trick:
One of the oldest negotiating tactics in the book is to insult the
product (or rental property in this case) with depreciating comments and
requests for repairs and/or improvements to be done. An eager landlord
is often side-tracked from the screening process by these decoy tactics.
10. The Old "Fake Injury Threatening Lawsuit" Trick:
Some tenants, usually when they hit hard times, will pretend to get
hurt on the property and blame it on the landlord’s negligence. They
first call and ask about the landlord’s insurance coverage. Then, while
cleverly hinting they might sue you, they may ask for free or reduced
rent for a while because they have medical expenses. Then they find an
opportunistic attorney to help them commit insurance fraud by suing you
for a settlement.
11. The Old "My Bank Made a Mistake" Trick:
To avoid a late charge or even just embarrassment, tenant may lie to
you by blaming the reason for their bounced check on the bank,
12. The Old "I’m out of Town" Trick:
A common excuse why the tenant was not able to pay the rent on time.
Of course, being out of town on business all the time can make it
impossible to mail the rent. What about mailing it early? What about
automatic withdrawal? These things would solve the problem and would be
used if the tenant was sincere.
13. The Old "Please Don’t Call or Tell my Wife I’m Late with the Rent" Trick:
An attempt to get the landlord in on the conspiracy to save the marriage of the tenant. A big load of BULL.
14. The Old "You’re a great guy" Trick:
Another big load of BULL. Sometimes the tenant will give you small
gifts to demonstrate his goodwill while he bilks you for months worth of
rent. The idea is to make you feel good while you get screwed. I had a
tenant who delivered a pizza to my house. (We didn’t eat it. I was
afraid it might be poisoned because I was evicting him.)
John Nuzzolese The Landlord Protection Agency http://www.thelpa.com
Announcement: Urban City Rentals launches it's Property Alert service!
Posted by Urban City Rentals
Urban City Rentals
Urban City Rentals Inc. provides professional rental property leasing and manage
User is currently offline
on Friday, 15 October 2010
in Property Management
With our new launch of Urban City Rentals "Property Alert" service - prospective tenants can sign up to receive immediate notification of any new listings! So, what does this mean to our investment rental property owner clients? Well, it means that we have a pre-qualified waiting list of potential tenants ready to rent your property! By choosing Urban City Rentals to manage your investment rental property, we can leverage our database of tenant prospects so you can start collecting rental income as soon as possible. Subscribers to our Property Alert are excellent candidates for your property and have been screened and filtered to ensure that your investment is protected through quality tenant placement. For more details on our rental property management and tenant placement services, please contact Urban City Rentals at 604-677-7369 or
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today!
Owner and Tenant Portals
Posted by Urban City Rentals
Urban City Rentals
Urban City Rentals Inc. provides professional rental property leasing and manage
User is currently offline
on Friday, 01 October 2010
in Property Management
Empowering our Owner clients with Real-Time Access to Their Investment Properties Performance:
By leveraging Urban City Rentals Owner Portals, owners have controlled, real-time access to their rental property portfolio information. This information is presented in a professional manner that rivals online banking with powerful features such as:
- Update contact information
- Real-Time threaded conversations with property managers with email alerts
- View and approve work orders
- View bills and attached invoices
- Access owner statements
- Run real-time reports
- Access shared documents
Give Tenants Online Access to Account InfoTenant are already accustomed to managing many of their accounts online, checking balances and making online payments. Why shouldn’t they get these same benefits from their landlord? Urban City Rentals offers all our tenants the ultimate amenity that differentiates our service from the competition and streamlines communications. With Urban City Rentals Tenant Portal, tenants can log into a secure website and access their account information, wherever or whenever they want, including: - Update contact information
- Real-Time threaded conversations with property managers with email alerts
- View tenant ledger
- Give notice to vacate
- Submit service requests and check their status
- Access shared lease and properties documents
Accept Service Requests Online and Manage All Aspects of Work OrdersIndustry experts all agree that the quality of customer service offered to tenants is one of the top three reasons why they choose to either renew their lease or vacate a unit. Just consider the high cost for replacing a tenant (i.e. turning the unit, listing the vacancy online, showing the unit, screening the prospect, etc.). Can you afford to offer poor customer service? Urban City Rentals Tenant Portal allow tenants to submit service requests online and check their status. The calls into the management office will quickly disappear and lease renewals will skyrocket! Our Tenant Portal allows you to manage the entire work order process: - Submit service requests with photos and descriptions
- Grant management staff access to their unit
- Check the status of service requests
- Communicate online with management staff with threaded conversations
- Receive real-time updates via email on work order status
Work Order Management
- Track all tenant service requests and work order
- Track work order related tasks
- Upload and share documents attached to work orders with tenants, owners and vendors
- Track your work crews time
- Create custom views, reports and dashboards of work order data
Share Documents With Owners and TenantsDid you know that the average property manager uses 10,000 pages a year? This is not only costly for your business, but it hurts our environment. Property managers waste countless hours each month searching for documents in file folders and sharing them with customers. These inefficiencies result in less time spent trying to fill vacant units and acquiring new customers. Go Green with Urban City Rentals and eliminate many of the documents you print each month by sharing them online. Each document can be emailed to customers or shared in their Owner or Tenant Portals with just a few clicks. - Create mail merge documents
- Email or share any document in your Owner or Tenant Portals
- Powerful search engine to find your documents
- Mark documents as Private to avoid sharing with others
- The same document can be shared between Tenant and Owner Portals
- Create custom reports to track documents created or deleted
Powerful Collaboration Tools Increase AccountabilityIn today’s information age, there are many ways for customers to communicate with your business. Inevitably, important communications fall through the cracks, resulting in frustrated tenants and owners. Urban City Rentals Owner and Tenant Portals give our customers one centralized location to communicate with our management team by simply starting an online conversation. Each time a new comment gets added to the conversation, the customer and our management team will be instantly notified by email. Best of all, conversations are stored on leases and work orders, while also available for reporting purposes. To find out more about Urban City Rentals rental property management and tenant placement services, click here.
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Property Management Articles and News
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posted by Urban City Rentals on Friday, 18 August 2023
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posted by Urban City Rentals on Wednesday, 16 August 2023
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This article is intended to assist you decide if you should consider hiring a property manager.1. Consider your distance to your property and number of visits you make.The larger the distance the more
posted by Urban City Rentals on Tuesday, 15 November 2011
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The sole determiner of what services you or will not be given, what costs you will incur and what rights you will have in the relationship is the contract you sign with the property management company
posted by Urban City Rentals on Thursday, 10 November 2011
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A big fraction of success as property managers is based on formulating plans and following them step by step . .and dealing with missed or late tenant payments is no exemption.We’ve always tried our b
posted by Urban City Rentals on Tuesday, 08 November 2011
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Many property managers and owners of residential real estate are lowering their standards and trying their best to make it easier for potential residents to sign that rental agreement. Yes, it’s
posted by Urban City Rentals on Thursday, 27 October 2011
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There are so many things that you can carry out to give your place a fresh new look without investing a lot of time or money. If your property includes rental units, keeping it clean and appealing can
posted by Urban City Rentals on Tuesday, 25 October 2011
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Property managers spend quite a bit of time thinking about how they should communicate with the residents of the properties they manage. Sadly, most residents give little thought to how they communica
posted by Urban City Rentals on Thursday, 20 October 2011
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For new landlords, starting and building a tough relationship with a new tenant and protecting your real estate investment is of supreme significance when making a lease agreement. There are a h
posted by Urban City Rentals on Friday, 14 October 2011
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Almost every day we hear a warning about rental scams on our national morning news broadcast. Logically we stop and listen to what it was all about. Frequently we hear our real estate business b
posted by Urban City Rentals on Wednesday, 12 October 2011
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