Spooky PM Horror Stories

It’s 5pm, you’ve just got home from a long day at work. You’re ready to sit down to dinner with your family when your phone rings.

I’m really sorry to bother you but we have a situation over here.

I remember that call like it was yesterday and I remember my response to the tenant.

The next words out of the tenants mouth can be visualized by this.

My response was simply – I honestly don’t even know what to say.

I was in shock.

Are you ok, I asked?

What was even worse is that the tenant’s child was in the car when this happened. I was still floored. How could this happen?

This had never happened to me before but I needed to figure something out, you see, because I was the property manager and I needed to be in charge of the situation.

My client lived hours away in Montreal and  was going to freak when I told him, but I needed to go to him with a plan.

So, after giving myself 10 minutes I went back at it with aa plan. I made some calls to devised a plan, and then called my client.

He freaked. He was just as shocked , so much so, he actually hung up on me.

I didn’t know what to expect from him, so I just continued to work on my plan and do the best for him. He eventually calmed down and called back and was grateful that we had a plan of attack.

I look back now and am thankful I survived but also realize it was aa tremendous opportunity of growth for me. Why? Well, because it was at that moment, I realized why people hired property management – to deal with situations just like this.

In this instance, I had to be the calm one. I had to present the client the situation but also the solution. Where a lot of investors fall down is that they think property management is management by committee, when in reality it’s not. They are (or at least should be) paying for your expertise and you need to be the expert.

While I may have been freaking out on the inside, I never let on that I was. You have to do the same. If you’re self-managing and you’re in the middle of a spooky situation it’s up to you to do the same. This is usually where we get a lot of calls from investors wanting our help and at that point, it’s almost too late.

Moral of the story is simple, if you’re going to self-manage, you need to be calm and be in control of the situation. This is why you’re paying yourself the big bucks to be the property manager.