Property Management in Orange County with Don Deering, Lion Properties

Property management. It’s almost like an extra. What do you need the property manager for? Because most owners that lived in the house themselves, they know that property better than anybody else, and they think they can do it themselves better than anybody else. And besides, why pay somebody else to do what they can do. The fact is though that most owners are not good managers. Number one, they get a tenant in there, and a lot of times they don’t even interview them, or give them an application, they just like the way they look and they like the story that they tell. Once in there, if they pay their rent on time, they never go back and check the property. They never raise rent, because they like them and they don’t want to run the risk of losing what seems to be a good tenant. So they save all that money, which is generally somewhere between five and ten percent the managers charge to manage their property.

I like to say that ours is a cost free service because we charge five percent of the rent to manage the property, and if we just raise the rent one time five percent, that service has now become free. We save the owner time. We are certainly not costing them any more money than they would be paying themselves. And we look over the property.

The other aspect is, is that owners do not stay up with the laws that are continually changing. I think there were 15 new laws that went into effect in the last two years just affecting property management. Yes, there are some abusers of people out there that do this. But, by and large, you have to stay up with all of the laws that affect property management and your job in representing somebody else.

Lion Properties does all of the things that normally property managers do. We’re full service. We get vendors to fix up the property. We don’t charge extra for that service, which a lot of property managers do, they tack on a fee just for hiring the vendor. We don’t. Whatever the vendor charges, that’s what the owner pays. Maybe, I just should open it up for questions, because this is not brain surgery. It’s just doing something that we do best. Yeah.

Participant: What Don says is completely true. A couple years ago Joey put in for an application to move into a house on Huntington Beach. And it was supposed to have been on May 1st, when the people moved out. They lived there for ten years. They had gone to the house and paid cash every first of the month. The landlords never once went and checked out the property. It was completely trashed. And it was August 1st before he could move out, and it took them $25,000 to repair the house so he could move in.

So what he’s saying is 100% true. Because I referred him to two of my people. They no longer have any headaches. He takes care of everything.

OK. Mark?

Mark: We have to mention that you do a credit check on the potential renters. That’s extremely important. Important because you get good rid of problems before they ever occur by doing that. That’s a part of your expertise.

We’re actually doing triple, what they call triple check. We check their credit, we check if they have bankruptcy. If they are in a bankruptcy, we don’t want to rent to anybody like that because they just throw the rent in with the bankruptcy. If it’s been discharged in the past, and their credit has been clean since, yes, we will. And then the third thing is if they’ve ever been evicted. We won’t rent to anybody that’s been evicted. If they’ve done it once, they can do it again. So yes, we do. Michael?

Do you go in the homes and inspect them at all, or check them out?

We train our vendors to be our eyes and ears. We don’t infringe on the clients. Some of the owners want their houses inspected twice a year. We do it contractually. We let the tenants know when they move in, we’re going to be coming back to inspect the property in six months. So, we do it by contract. But if we have somebody to go in there, they’re trained to look around and see how that property’s being maintained on the inside and report back to us. Good question. Yes, ma’am?

Along with the monthly percentage, do you have a startup fee to do all that paperwork?

There’s not a startup fee. What we have is a fee to place the tenant the first time. That’s to do all the background checks and so forth. To get that, that fee is $500.

What’s your comfort zone as far as area?

Orange County. We manage several in Long Beach. Most of those were because we managed their other properties in Orange County and they asked us to pick up one.

How large of a unit do you like?

That’s a good question. We try to keep it to small apartment buildings and single family homes and condos. Most of these, again, are people that lived in that property themselves. Some are investors, and we do, especially in Huntington Beach, manage a lot of fourplexes down in the downtown area. We don’t go anything over 12 units because at 16 units, then you have to have an onsite manager. I don’t want to get involved in having employees, those kind of employees, at least. I have seven people that work for me now. I think when, when I first started, i had a staff of three. Part of our growth has been because of the poor economy. People didn’t want to sell their house in a down market, so they’ve turned it over to us to manage until the market rebounds, whenever that happens. But a lot of it has just come from people like in this group, other realtors, other owners who we’ve done a good job for have referred to us. Any more questions? Thank you very much for your attention.

Don Deering
714-378-1480
10101 Talbert #212
17155 Newhope Street, Suite A
Fountain Valley, CA 92708
lionproperties.com
deardon@lionproperties.com
Don’s Google Places page: Lion Property Management Orange County