Tenant F.A.Q.

Per our standard lease rent is due on the 1st and late after the 5th of every month.

There are two methods of payments.

Electronic deposit directly into your bank account, this method is preferred by the vast majority of our owners and is much quicker allowing us to get you paid between the 7th-9th of the month.

Physical check in the mail, our bank will send you a check and depending on the mail delivery service you should receive a check between the 11th-14th of the month.

Owners will receive an itemized statement monthly emailed from our property management software every month between the 7th-9th.

We conduct a thorough background check on each applicant.

–  We verify that they make at least three times the monthly rent and have steady employment.

–  We check with their previous landlord to ensure that they have been good tenants, and paid rent on-time.

–  We obtain a credit report to verify credit score, payment history, monthly obligations, prior evictions and criminal history.  If there is a problem with an applicant’s credit, we can require last month’s rent to be pre-paid in addition to the security deposit.

We conduct an initial survey of the property’s condition when the new tenant moves in and further surveys are conducted upon owner request.   I also conduct a survey if I receive any complaints about the condition of the property, and make sure that the problem is taken care of by the tenant.

There are several factors that determine how much a property will rent for, such as the number of bedrooms, square footage, location, amenities, etc.  With the address of the property I can research how much comparable properties in your neighborhood have rented for and if there are any similar properties currently for rent.   We have found that rental comps along with our 10+ years of property management experience will give us a very good idea how much rent we can receive for your property.

The amount of time required to find a qualified tenant to rent a property depends both on the property itself, and on the current market rental conditions.  The average property takes two to four weeks to rent.

This it totally up to you!  We will pay as many bills for the property as you want and are comfortable with up to the amount of one month’s rent.  The one bill we do not pay is property tax bills.

Tenants will contact us directly with any maintenance issues and we will coordinate with our reliable contractors to get the repair done in a timely manner.  We will then pay the invoice and deduct the expenses on the next owner’s statement.  If any repair exceeds $300 (repairs to large appliances, air-conditioners / heaters, larger plumbing repairs, etc.), we will call the owner first to get approval unless it’s an emergency.  In certain cases we will require a $500 owner contribution that will be held to pay future repair expenses.  With our 10+ year of property management experience we have compiled a complete list of good, reliable and reasonably priced contractors.

If a property needs paint, new carpet / floor work, landscaping or other larger repairs to get a property in good condition to attract a good tenant we will help coordinate that work at no additional cost.

No, we do NOT charge for our time to coordinate repairs; large or small. You are billed only for the actual cost of the repair work, this is part of our job as your property manager.  Other companies will mark up repair invoices 10% or more and pass that cost onto you, we do not charge anything!

Our standard security deposit is 1.5 X rent for good tenants.  The amount of a deposit can very depending on the tenants application, credit, income and owners requirement.  If an applicant has lower credit due to a recent short sale or foreclosure, but is paying all other credit obligations and has good income they can be considered by increasing the deposit to 2 x rent.  Per CA law we hold the tenant’s security deposit in a broker trust account.  When the tenant moves out any cleaning or repairs that are required are deducted from the security deposit and the balance is returned to the tenant.

We advertise your property on our website, Craigslist.org, Zillow.com, Trulia.com, many other real estate websites, and if needed we can post a for lease sign at your property.  Our website gets top listing by Google for both organic and paid searches.  All of this advertisement is done at no cost to you.

For single-family homes, we charge 9%, and condos/townhouses we charge 10% of the monthly rent collected.

You can also choose what we call Lease Only “Tenant Finding” Service where we find a qualified tenant and then you take over and manage the tenant and property.  We will assess the property rental value, advertise, show, screen, check credit / references and deliver a qualified tenant with a lease and hold security deposit check.   For this service we charge a one-time fee of 5% of the annual lease amount.  The typical fee is a little over a half of a month’s rent.   The fee is not due until the tenant’s official move in date.