Owners FAQs

Hi, I am Greg Paielli, with Simply Property Management. I often get asked the question from many prospective owners, "Do you inspect our property?" The answer to that is yes. We do. We generally perform three inspections, maybe four on your property the first year, and then after the first year we will perform sometimes one, maybe two, depending on the tenant and the situation . Oftentimes, it can be as many as four or five times, because we send our personnel in there, if they ask for a maintenance work order, or service order for something to be fixed. We do get to see the property quite often.

When we do an inspection on the property, we go room by room, and we take a photograph of each room, rating the condition, cleanliness of each room, We send you that link, each time we do a full inspection so you can view your home. If there is something broken we will also describe what has to be done and place a repair order on the issue. Inspections are very very important and I can't stress how important they are. They do several things.

One, the tenants know that we're coming. They respect the house better. Two, when the tenant moves out, the home is in generally better condition than if you don't inspect it. The worst thing you want to do is not do any inspections and then you get the house back in 12, 24, or 36 months and the house is just completely tore up. A lot of this can be avoided by having regular inspections, and most great tenants will always know that we're coming, and they will keep the house in nice shape.

Thank you very much.

Hi, I am Greg Paielli with Simply Property Management. I often get asked the question from prospective owners "do we require tenants to carry tenant renter's insurance?" And the answer is yes we do. We never give out keys to any property or anyone unless they have renter's insurance in place prior to the move-in, as well as have us named as the additional insured. The additional insured is very important because in the event that the insurance for some reason gets canceled for non-payment or some other issue, we get notified of it and then we know the tenant has to get insurance placed back on the property again. We will start to send tenants notices if we receive such a cancellation notice.

The reason this additional insured is important as well, is if there is a loss like a fire and it's deemed that it is the tenant's fault, then the tenant has insurance to repay either for the fire damage itself or your insurance company for their loss. Another reason is your insurance on your home does not cover the tenant's personal property such as their computers and personal things in the home which include, their TVs, stereos ect.

Hello, I would like to talk a little bit about do we require our company to be named as an additional insured on your insurance policy? The answer is yes, we do. The main reason that we do this is A, we will be able to communicate with the insurance company in the event that there is a loss. B, we also get notification if for some reason the insurance policy gets canceled, and you do not get notification or if there is non-payment.

It's like a security blanket. Also, one last thing that I want to talk to you a little bit about is if you have been living in the home prior to this point, then you have to make sure that you call your insurance agent and you change your policy to a landlord policy. It is much different than a homeowner's policy. Thank you very much.

Hi, I am Greg Paielli with Simply Property Management. I often get asked the question Greg, do you sell homes? The answer to that is yes. We sell homes for people that are not our current clients and we sell many homes for our current clients. Many of us in our office are realtors and we do have MLS services, so we are able to get all the data on the home sales of the area and all the statistics that we need in order to successfully sell a home. There is several advantages of selling a home with our company.

One is if you have a tenant in the home, we have already a personal relationship with the tenant, and it becomes easier for us to get in, to show the home. The tenant's more likely to give us access since we are the property management company. Two, we know your house much better, we have already probably performed work in your home so we know if there is any issues with your home. That gives us an advantage over other Realtors. Three, we will give you an honest assessment of the value of your home. We already have been working with you for a period of time, so we will give you a true picture of what the value is. Fourth we have over 30 years of experience in selling homes. Those advantages will help us get your home sold quicker.

Lastly, we use websites such as Zillo and Trulia and our own website to advertise We have many buyers that come to our website per month that are looking to buy homes. If you have any other questions, please feel free to give me a call. Thanks.

Hi, I am Greg Paielli with Simply Property Management. I often get asked on the phone from different prospective owners "I have a property that is furnished and I want to rent it furnished", and so the biggest question I always ask is The furnishings. What are the furnishings? Is it fully furnished or is it partial furnished?" Fully furnished would come with everything. All the linens and the towels and the sheets. It would be fully furnished. Plates, cups, furniture, everything. Dining room set, living room set, TVs. If you're going to rent it furnished that is the best way to rent it, and partial furnished is nothing more than a problem , because what ends up happening is we have to figure out how we're going to advertise the property, and if we advertise it furnished and people come and only see it's partial furnished, then they say "this is not furnished". So we lose a lot of people.

Another problem with the furnished properties is What happens if people damage your furnishings? What happens if things come up missing? Those items will need to be repaired or replaced. So unless it's completely furnished, fully furnished, and it's more like a vacation-type rental where people come and stay for short-term stays we recommend that the house be completely vacant with all the furnishings removed, and we just market the property unfurnished. Thank you very much.

Hello. I would like to talk just briefly about what is involved in preparing your house for rent. Basically, when you sign up with our services, we give you a sheet called "Rent Ready Requirements" and it has a list of things that we require. We want the property in very clean condition and we want everything in good repair. We do not rent houses unless everything has been completely repaired and it is in clean condition, because that's what we expect from the tenant when we get the house back Thank you.

Hi, I am Greg Paielli with Simply Property Management. Today I would like to talk to you a little bit about how our maintenance works with our rental properties. Basically, our tenants have a portal and they report all service requests. Once we get a service request we schedule an appointment to go out to see the particular item in disrepair. At that time we determine if the repair is necessary by lease or by law, or is an emergency. And so once we figure that out, then we determine what action needs to be taken. We get some kind of estimate of cost. If it is a large repair and we don't have funds to do it, we will contact you immediately, and ask you to fund the account properly so that we can get it taken care of.

If it is a smaller repair, we will setup another appointment with the tenant and we will go out and take care of the repair as soon as possible. If it's an emergency, we go out and we take care of it as soon as possible. They're basically a priority for our organization. We take maintenance very serious, it's an important part of keeping the tenant happy, keeping the tenant in place. The longer the tenant leases from you the higher Net Operating Income. Thank you very much

Hi, I am Greg Paielli, with Simply Property Management. I often get asked the question, "Greg, how do you select tenants for our property?" Well, we go through a complete screening of every tenant. So, when the prospect decides that they want to apply for one of our homes, they can go online, and we have an application process. They have to complete an application. They have to give us a copy of their driver's license, paycheck stubs, bank statements. Once we have the application, we do a credit and criminal report on the tenant reviewing both credit ,criminal and sex offenderrecords. We verify their employment and their housing references. Once completed, we have certain policies and procedures that we go through to have it underwritten. We make sure that they have enough income which is the key thing and Finally we check their criminal record and make sure that there's nothing serious there as well.

Then if that all passes, we send out the tenant an approval letter and we ask them to come in and bring one month's rent or deposit. Once that is in, we will send them out all the paperwork. We have a lease with several addendum's on it. Once everything is signed, we request a copy of their renters' insurance, we also request that they have a copy of the utilities in their name. When we are finished with all that, then we will schedule a move-in date with them and they will pay us the rest of the funds due. A Inspection will be done at the move in date as well. Thank you.

I am Greg Paielli with Simply Property Management. Today I would like to speak to you a little bit about if your home is within a Homeowners' Association. As you know, there's rules and regulations, and you are running a business now when you decided to rent your house and sometimes problems arise where tenants or residents decide either to knowingly not follow the rules, or unknowingly not follow the rules, but that does not excuse them from following them. We give every tenant the rules and regulations and the CCNRs when they sign the lease, so they know what the rules and regs are, and we do hold them accountable in the event that there is any kind of violations of those rules or regulations.

If you find yourself receiving a notice like in the mail, our recommendation is to get in touch with us right away by sending us a copy of the notice, and please send it in a pdf format. Not jpeg, because we need to be able to read it clearly, and the tenant needs to as well. We have to send the notice to the tenant, and it's very hard to read sometimes if it is a picture.

As soon as we get the notice, we will notify the tenant, and we may go out and inspect the violation as well, and then we will require the tenant get the violation in order if it is the tenant fault. If there is no tenant in the property, then obviously we will go out and we will handle the violation for you. One thing that we do ask though initially, is that you put us on the mailing list of the HOA. That helps us get the notice more promptly than by the time they mail it to you and then you get it to us, a lot of days may have gone by.

If you find that the notice has come and the expiration date of us getting the repairs have expired, and you have a tenant in the property and now there is a fine that has been issued, then we will issue the fine to the tenant on their account. If you have any other questions about this, please feel free to contact me. Thanks very much.

Hi, I am Greg Paielli with Simply Property Management. Today I would like to talk to you a little bit about receiving late rent. Unfortunately, we frown on late rent and act swiftly on late rent, but once you are in the rental business, it is a reality that this type of thing can happen so you have to be prepared if it does happen. For rent that does not come in by the fifth of the month, we start to begin to process , sending legal notices to those people who still owe us rent and if they don't comply with the legal notice within the time frame of when the rent is due in accordance to the notice, then we take the files and we send them to our attorney's office and they start the legal process to restore the property back to us.

In the event that the tenant does not pay the rent by the time the Court date is set, then we file for the eviction and we show up for court to get a judgment for possession of the property. At that point, the tenant does not have the right to pay the rentany further after the court date. From time to time, we do make arrangements if the tenant's been a good tenant and they're just got behind on the rent for some unforeseeable situation. After the expiration of the Order from the judge, we then make contact and file with the Sheriff or Constable's office for the lock out portion of the eviction. Thank you very much.

Hello. I am Greg Paielli with Simply Property Management. Today, I would like to speak to you a little bit about our lease renewal process.

Our lease renewal process generally starts about 90 days prior to the expiration of the tenant lease. If you were not wanting to re-rent your property or you would like to sell your property at this time, we would need to get a notice from you at least 90 days in advance so that we do not start this process and then we will notify the tenants that you will not be renewing their lease again.

The 90-day period starts where we initiate an inspection of the property, and then the inspection goes into our software. You do have access to the inspection so that you can view the condition of the property at the time. Once we evaluate the condition and determine that this is a resident that we would like to keep, we do a CMA, which is a comparative market analysis of the area to come up with an appropriate rent amount before we offer your tenant another 12-month lease. Under no circumstances do we ever offer anybody over a 24-month lease without first consulting with you, the owner of the property.

After that, we send out a renewal to the tenant, and the tenant decides if they want to renew or not. If they don't want to renew , they will go on a month-to-month basis and their rent will automatically increase by 10%. Sometimes we don't want month-to-month renters just because it's the time of the year and we don't want to take the chance that they may move out during the holiday season or another undesirable part of the year that is harder to get the property re-rented. The most important thing is that we try to always get a signed renewal lease. If you have any other questions, please feel free to give us a call. Thank you.

Hi, I am Greg Paielli, with Simply Property Management. Today, I would like to talk to you a little bit about how our office markets your property when it becomes available for rent. We start out the process by doing an inspection of your property, prior to the marketing. We determine if your home is in what we consider rent-ready condition. If it is not in rent-ready condition, we will make it in rent-ready condition. Rent-ready condition to us means that there is nothing in disrepair and the house is in very nice clean and show able condition, something that you would rent or I would rent. That would be our starting point.

Once we have that accomplished, then we start by taking videos and high-quality pictures. When we are done with that, we load those pictures into our Show Mojo account. That is our showing process software. We also load it onto our website, and social media accounts. Those are the three main sources that we advertise on. We also generally add a sign to the property .

One more point I wanted to make on our Show Mojo platform. Once it is on our Show Mojo platform, it syndicates to roughly 25 other rental sites on the internet. So, your property gets a lot of exposure between the videos, the signage, the social media, and our website. You will get a report each Monday morning from us, with regards to how many emails we had on the property, how many viewings we have had, and how many phone calls we had on. So, we do keep track of all that, and able to give you this information each Monday morning by email. Thank you very much.

Hi, I am Greg Paielli with Simply Property Management.

I often get asked the questions: Greg, should I accept pets at my property? My answer is yes, I would agree that you should accept pets. The reason being if you don't accept pets, you eliminate a great portion of the population that would potentially rent your property, causing more days on the market, loss of rents and more marketing time. I would totally recommend it.

Do we have to accept all pets? My answer is no, and we can put a limit on the pets. For instance, we have a breed restriction. We don't accept certain types of dangerous breeds, even though some what we consider dangerous breeds are bad, a lot of dangerous breeds are not, but we just can't tell on how the pet has been brought up and what the temperament is of the pet. We end up having to exclude those pets. It's unfortunate, but in this world, this is what we have to do in order to protect the rights of others.

I highly recommend that we do pets. Obviously, if somebody comes with a disability and they request a pet, you have to let them have one, and you can't charge a deposit. That's very important that gets taken care of as well. Outside of that, I would highly recommend people to accept pets. Not all pets are going to do a lot of damage, plus we get a security deposit for it. Plus, there's a pet fee we can get for it. I highly recommended pets . We think it's a great idea. Thank you very much.

Hi, my name is Greg Paielli with Simply Property Management. Today I would like to talk to you a little bit about renting your property when a tenant is already currently in the property. We can do this. We place your home on what we call a pre-leasing status on our web site, and people have to schedule an appointment to see the property. Some of the negative things I want to talk about when this happens is one, we always can't get into the property. The tenant is not always available to help us show it, and so we lose interest and it gains days on market. Another problem that we run into is that the property doesn't always look nice to show. People have different living styles, people's thoughts about what clean is, and what clean is not, is different and so a lot of times we run into problems where it doesn't show as well either.

Then, another problem that we have is that the house needs repairs, so we generally will do the repairs once the tenant moves out. Sometimes we have to do further cleaning of the property, and so it's hard to coordinate with the tenant moving in at the same time. Those are some of the problems that we have. On the positive side of it, is if the tenant that's living in the home currently keeps it in really nice shape, and moves out, and cleans the carpets and cleans the place great, then we don't have to do much and you as the owner don't lose a month's rent, or a few week's rent, or any rent. A lot of it depends on the current tenant in the house, and how they keep it and if we can be successful. Thank you very much.

Hello. I would like to talk a little bit about whether or not a landlord should revert the utilities back to their name after a tenant moves out. Basically what you should probably do is contact the different utilities that are supplied to your home and check with the utility providers whether or not they offer this type of service. Some utility providers provide that any time someone turns off the utilities, they automatically go into your name. We highly recommend this especially if you have a pool or you have a watering system to water grass or plants. It's very, very important. Please check with your utility carrier. It can also speed up the turn of your home.. When people move out we can quickly get the place cleaned and back on the market again. Thank you.

Hello. I would like to talk a little bit about if you have an HOA where your home is located at, and what our requirements are. Typically when you first sign up with us, you will receive, a document to sign that allows us to talk to the HOA in the event that we have to communicate with them. We also will ask you to supply us a copy of the Rules & Regulations and the CC&Rs, we will also ask that you provide us with any form that we have to fill out for a new resident. Thank you very much.

Hello, I would like to talk a little bit about, what happens if my tenant does not pay the rent. This unfortunately from time to time happens. There is nothing that we can do to stop that from happening or that you could do to stop it from happening.We take precautions to find you the perfect tenant. Less than 1% of the time, do we ever have a problem with nonpayment,but it does happen from time to time.

When it happens, we serve an appropriate notice immediately after we have not received rent by the fifth day of the month. We then will then start taking a legal action to either get the rent paid or get possession back of your property, so that we can re-rent it again. Thank you.

Hi. I am Greg Paielli with Simply Property Management. I often get asked by owners, "What happens with the security deposit that the tenant gives you?" Well first, the security deposits sits in our trust account during the term that the tenant is occupying your home. Many people think the security deposit is theirs, but in actuality the security deposit is the tenant's.

It is for the tenant to have faithfully finished and completed the lease with no damages, and then it is up us to return the deposit within the statue allowed time. It's a very strict thing, and we have to go through each house and we compare the move-in sheet to the current condition. If there is damage to the property and, it wasn't damaged when they moved in, then what we do is we try to compare the 2 conditions. We have to find out how much it's going to cost to fix the damage, and then we subtract off the security deposit the cost of the repair. Then we return the remaining security deposit to the tenant.

So, some things that owners think they should have to pay for is like re-painting the whole house. Well, if the house has been painted seven years ago, then it's hard to charge the tenant's security deposit the whole paint cost, so we pro-rate things. For instance, if the carpet is five years old, the average carpet lasts eight years, let's say. Well, we certainly can't charge the tenant for all brand new carpet in the event of damage.

So that's really important, we will pro-rate that type of stuff and then we will return the remaining security deposit to the tenant. We' will take the rest of the security deposit and put it toward the repairs.

Today I am going to talk a little bit about what determines the rent for my property. First, we do a comparative rental analysis prior to us placing anyone into your property to see what the rents are being paid in the area. Then we will communicate that number to you, either by written notice, phone call or an email, letting you know the approximate rent value for your property. Please consider that the rent value does not correspond with your mortgage payment, that is one thing that some people often ask me Your home will rent for basically what the other houses rent of similar size, nature, and similar area. Thank you very much.

Hello. Today I would like to talk a little bit about when can I expect to see my first payment? Generally, the first payment that you will receive from us when you first start out and sign up for our services will largely depend on when you sign up for our services. So typically how we handle it is, on the first day of each month, or very closely to there, we send out all of our owners payments for the prior month. So if you sign up with us say on the 15th or the 18th of the month, you could see your first payment out within like 15 days or 10 days. Depends on when you sign up. But then there forward, after that, it will be around the first of each month you can expect to see your payment. Thank you.

Hello, I would like to talk a little bit about who pays for the maintenance on my property. The answer to that is it depends. If it is a normal wear and tear maintenance, the owner is responsible to pay for the repairs. If it is tenant caused damage, then the owner pays for it initially, but then it gets reimbursed from the tenant.

And then another question I often get as well, is who determines that? Well, us as professional property managers we will make that decision since we may have received reports from our maintenance staff about the repairs.

Thank you very much.

Hello. Today I would like to talk a little bit about if you have a pool on your property and who takes care of it. Here at Simply Property Management, we take care of all pools with our preferred vendors at your expense. It just works easier for us, and we can maintain better quality and control of your pool. Thank you.

Hello, I would like to talk a little bit about who takes care of the landscaping of my home when the house has been rented. And the answer to that is, while the house is rented, the tenant is responsible for the landscaping of the home and the cost of it, up to, six feethigh. So major trees that are over six feet high, the landlord is responsible for taking care of the landscaping. And then also, another thing is, the owner is responsible for the piping and the underground landscaping watering system. When the home is vacant, then we will take care of the landscaping with one of our improved vendors at your expense. Thank you very much.

Hello. Today, I would like to talk a little bit about who takes care of the pest control at my home. Typically, once the tenant has moved in, the tenant is responsible for all the pest control services that get provided to the home. During the period when the house is vacant, you as the landlord are responsible for the cost of it, and we will provide the service with one of our approved vendors. Thank you very much.

Hi. I am Greg Paielli with Simply Property Management.

I would like to talk to you today a little bit about your home as an investment. One thing that I would like to tell prospective owners that are going to rent their home is that it is now an investment, your home. If you had been living in the house, it now has turned into a business, there needs to be some financial planning involved with this investment.

First thing I would like to talk about is if you have a mortgage on your house ? The market really does not care if you have a mortgage, and that doesn't necessarily determine what the rent is going to be for the home either. Many people think that my mortgage is $1,300, so my rent has to be $1,400 or $1,300. It does not work like that. The rent gets set based on the market rate, and how we determine the market rate is by going out there and we take a look at similar homes in a similar area and see what they have rented for recently.

From there, we take a look and there needs to be some planning involved because there will be repairs during the term of the tenancy. Almost every single house has some work orders that come in that costs money. If your mortgage is higher than what the rent is going to be, you need to plan for that and you are just going to have to try to figure out, is it the best idea to rent the home or maybe should we sell the home? That is a big consideration that people need to consider is there will be expenses on the home and not only the management fee. There's going to be maintenance as well. There is taxes and insurance and other stuff, so please consider this as you go along.