We can create this for you Dee.  Much better to use the use the library@apmasphere.com.au link in the letters & docs section to make your requests though :-)

whoops sorry all new to me

Dee this is already stipulated on your Management Agreement where the appropriate authority can be provided by the Lessor. Might save you another job and unnecessary paperwork ladies!

Thanks for that information Katie. Although you cant send that into council and other places for authority, so they can send the bills to agent acting on there behalf.  Or is it the owners responsibility to inform them of change? Understand about less paperwork though thanks.

Only the property owner can request a change of mailing address to the appropriate authorities. Do you charge a service for payment of these accounts on behalf of your clients?

Good idea Katie. I've come across quite a few agents charging for all sorts of things on this site--photos, file closure, water charge. Why not charge to pay their extra bills too. All this takes time and time is money. What else can you charge for?

We don't charge for nearly enough! We're scheduling a management meeting in the next couple of weeks to discuss implement new fees.

End of Financial Year Statement is a common fee that agencies charge, and one which thus far we have not. That will be one of the new fees we will introduce.

Simon Cox or Malcom Riley (sorry guys, I can't remember who it was exactly - but I think you're both fantastic!) mentioned a great one the other day that I'd heard them talk about before - File Closure Fee for when a management terminates, irrespective of the reason (ie, property sold, management transfers, owner takes back management).

This fee is designed to cover the office expense that pertains to preparing the file for handover - love the idea of this as at the moment, we seem to be doing it for love!

I think the file closure fee is a fantastic idea too. The problem is how do you introduce new fees onto existing managements.  What ideas do you have with this one Katie. I'm worried about potentially losing managements when you do this.  It can be easily added to new managements but the old ones you have to be really careful

Yeah agree completely. At this stage, we are simply looking at imposing the fees on new managements... we recently increased our management fee on existing managements and therefore do not wish to rock the boat further at this stage. When we he have our next management meeting we'll possibly develop a staggered system for introducing new fees to existing clients over a period of time.

Even doing the management fees is a worry. We have some really old managements on ridiculusly low management fees and don't want to rock the boat. We have slowly increased these on new management. Everything else goes up in life but landlord complain on the amount going up eventhough the rent has gone up. I have to explain that it is a percentage of the rent. Imagine what could happen if the percentage went up

We were also worried about increasing our fees 0.5% (+ GST) and our fees had remained unchanged for almost 10 years. However it was surprising how fee actually opposed the change. All in all, out of the 1300 properties we parted company with 6 only - not too bad. However it's important to ensure your Lessors are happy with the service they are receiving before you go putting up the fees - do you do any sort of client surveys?

And if you add all these other types of fees too. That might be just too much for some to possibly cope with

Not as yet. I was think of doing a survey recently but wasn't sure what to ask. Do you have one to share with everyone?

For sure... personally I don't like shifting the goal posts so to speak once the games kicked off in relation to adding additional fees for services currently provided under the existing management fee, however if we start on all new managements we'll be on our way to actually being paid what I honestly believe we're worth (and then some!).

I agree its probably the way to do it.  Get info from landlords first of what they like/dislike. Try to attend to any dislikes for a good period of time and then just do it. Malcom said at one of his sessions recently people worry too much about the things that might happen that may never ever happen anyway

We have a couple of different surveys we use - for Lessors and tenants and prospective clients etc. These however form part of a subscription program PPM System and therefore I would be breaching their copyright agreement to distribute to you (I'm sorry).

But if you'd like to draft something up I'd be more than happy to give you a second opinion on it.

Asking questions across the board in regards to rating your performance with things like maintenance, letting process, quality of reports, statement & funds disbursements, promptness of service etc will generally give you the information you need.

Some people are scared to ask, it's never nice to hear negative comments. But these are really the most valuable information you can have - now you know exactly the areas most in need of improvement.

Although warm & fuzzy comments give us a little pat on back, it's actually the negative comments that you'll really want (for lack of a better word!) as this will allow you to develop and improve your business.

How often are these sent out?

Depends what we're trying to gauge really - we're probably not as consistent as we should be!

All new managements will receive a survey within the first month of letting, same with new tenants.

If we do not secure a management, we'll send out a survey to find out why and therefore how we can improve.

Before we increased our fees we sent out a survey to all Lessors and ran a competition that a Lessor who returned the survey would be drawn to win one month's free management fees.

This gave us a better response than we'd previously experienced.

Generally annually we send a survey for a 'general' feedback report.

Keeping in touch like this also helps with value adding to landlords as they can see you are trying to constantly improve. You are not just contacting them because there is a problem with their property. It shows you care about their needs. Good idea on having a competition to return the survey otherwise they probably won't return it unless there was a real issue. Suppose it could be annononus if they didn't really want you to know about where the complaint came from.

I was thinking about adding other things to the survey that don't relate to property management so that you get to know them as real people too eg what jobs they do, birthdays. Then you would have other info on them too that you can talk to them about when you do contact them

I find some landlords like to tell you all sorts of things and you get to know them really well on a personal note too but others are so to themselves. Its hard to know what they are thinking

Yep... these points we call Fuzzies. When noted on the file, gives you something relevant to discuss or acknowledge.

I used to be a teacher and this was the first thing you did with children. In this industry you just seem to sign up the management and go from there. Taking a step back and thinking about it adults really like alot of the same things as children. If you can find the key to make people feel good you get rewarded in so many ways.

Its just hard to do this with adults at times especially if they are far away

I think the way  to start this process could be to just send out a simple update your details sheet in case something has changed since the management was signed and you could ask for their preferred contact method and times. Then you could go from there every so often asking more specific question What do you think?

apmasphere has a landlord survey in the Letters & Docs Margaret.  If you would like anything changed, you can use the 'propose changes' button which appears when you open the document on the right hand side.

Hi Margaret,  I send out details up date forms with each inspection notice as I have found tenants change mobile numbers quite often as for my owners I send one with the report I email or post every 17 weeks. 

Last Christmas I had a brain wave of taking a photo of every property we manage then incorperated this into a calender with a photo of our office staff at the bottom. I also put the property address on the top of the property shot.  It was a huge and time consuming task to complete as every shot was a new picture taken in November and our owners loved it and we received many thanks and our owners were able to put a face to our names. Mind you some of our team didnt like me muchand kept asking " who's brain child was this" lol

This does sound like a nice idea. We have some owners with multiple properties so a different one for each property would look silly but I suppose you could put them all onto 1 calendar. We generally send out an office calender at the end of the year so a personalized one would give that extra touch. It would probably get people talking about you and hopefully lead to something good. We find that people generally like customised products

Its a similar idea that we had in delivering stubbie coolers to people's mailboxes rather than just a flyer. (Note we bought a very large printing machine off a friend who didn't want to do this anymore and made them ourselves) Flyer's generally just get thrown out.  We are always trying to give away something that people can use. If they can find it useful they are more likely to keep it. And if it is something completely different they are more likely to talk about it to someone else.

Dee, thanks for your suggestions, two new docs have been uploaded. Form - Instructions to pay Outgoings from Rent and Letter - Advice to Third Party, Change of Billing Address. I have found that some third parties will accept your written advice for change of address and some will not.  These docs could be used on email too.

p.s - thanks apmasphere.