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Here’s creative solution to a tenant who just won’t leave from when I was practicing real estate law.

I had a client come to me who hadn’t been using a property manager. He had rented a small house to some tenants and he didn’t check references (how many times have I heard that!). By the time he came to me, the tenants had trashed the place, were 4 months behind in the rent AND they had ignored his notice to pay rent or vacate. I explained his options to him and after he considered the time, expense and hassle involved he decided to actually offer to PAY THEM to move out. He offered them about $300 (from what I remember) - and it worked - they moved out the next weekend. I think maybe it worked because they couldn’t afford to move - and they were able to use the money for the next place. (more…)

So - here’s the latest on April 2007 searches (most popular listed first) on the allpropertymanagement website. As usual, SF home or condo (<$300K) was the most popular search in terms of the type of property needing to be managed. Also as usual, California, Florida and Texas led in terms of geographic location. Finally, the prize for the most popular zip code goes to: 95926 - Chico, California. Property managers in Chico - if you’re looking for properties, we should chat! (more…)

It’s been a long haul trying to get www.allpropertymanagement.com to appear at the top of the search engines for our keyterm “property management”. Finally, we can say we have arrived - we’re #1 on Google for this term.

Since we’ve been at #1 on google for a few months, I decided to check my old friend Alexa and see just how much our rank had improved on that site.

So, given our ever improving organic listings I was surprised that Alexa says our rank is getting worse. The last time I checked in late 2006 we were right on the cusp of the top 100,000. Now with much improved traffic they place us around 180,000. I decided to take a look at Compete. Low and behold they have our rank at 26,193 and improving. Now that’s a little better. But why the difference?

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Here’s a practical problem we at allpropertymanagement.com face everyday:

We do advertising and marketing for property management companies, and we want our site to be a credible and reliable one. So, while we’re not aware of any print media, such as the Yellowpages, doing this, we require our client’s advertising on our site to sign a statement that they have met all licensure requirements for their business.

Despite this assurance, we strongly recommend that anyone using the site check with their local real estate commission to make sure the company they work with has the proper licensure and that there are no disciplinary actions against them. (more…)

Owning an investment property is a great step towards financial independence. While many owners decide to manage the property themselves, others find that having a property management company manage their asset for them can greatly simplify their lives. Depending on whether or not they have a real estate broker’s license, a property manager can: (more…)