June 24, 2008

Why won't she just 'give us the pickle'?

In my management training classes, we watched a silly video about good customer service. There was a story of a deli owner who always put pickles on the plates with his sandwiches. Then he decided to cut costs and stopped putting the pickles with the sandwiches. A longtime customer came in and complained that they always looked forward to that pickle, and if he wasn't going to give it to them, they would go somewhere else that would. The point of the video was to give the customer what they want. "Give them the pickle!!"

This morning at approximately 6:45, I faxed over the leasing and property management paperwork to the company we decided to use to lease the house. But let me rewind a little bit.
Yesterday afternoon, I emailed K. with that company to see about setting up a meeting to go over any additional questions. At the same time, I emailed our realtor G. to see if there is anything else we need to do with her before signing with the property management company. K emailed me back within an hour agreeing to a meeting that afternoon. We went to the meeting, got our questions answered, and felt really positive about our decision and told them we would fax the paperwork over in the morning. G called me about 6 hours after I emailed her and basically asked if we were sure we wanted to rent it, and there have been problems getting tenants to pay, etc. Then told me she would check into it and let me know. Wasn't sure what she was going to check into. But was annoyed that it was about the average thing she pulls- keeps us out of the loop about anything concerning the house until we have a problem with her service and email her with questions. Isn't her job to sell our house and tell us everything about it, what the comps are, what's changed since we last checked, etc? We don't know any of that.

So I faxed the paperwork over, then when I got home, a guy from the property management company was here to take pictures to get it up on MLS. He also had their sign in the front yard 'For Lease'. I called K to let him know that we got the pictures taken care of, and also that I'd received an email from G saying that she wasn't sure she wanted to 'co-broker' the property. He said that they've never had a problem with realtors letting them come in and take care of the leasing side, as long as the realtors are still handling the selling side. She wants to be responsible for putting it up for lease on MLS and finding a tenant. Then she wants us to hand it over to them and let them handle the month-to-month responsibilities.

That wouldn't necessarily be a problem except that she told us they are having trouble finding good tenants. Our company has a less than 1% failure rate with tenants, and manages over 30 properties in our neighborhood. We feel confident that they will help us find a good tenant. Not to mention, two different people from our company mentioned that they have been turning people away every day that are looking to rent in our neighborhood because there aren't properties available. The guy who came to take pictures said he thought they could have a tenant for us in about a week. That would be great, but before that, I was told the average was about 18 days in finding a tenant. It just doesn't get better than that. This month and next month are the best for leasing properties because everyone wants to move before school starts, and our neighborhood has excellent amenities.

So now we're stuck in the middle. I can't handle going between the two anymore, so Bean is handling it. I don't feel comfortable with her being in charge of finding a tenant. I only feel comfortable with her trying to sell the house until her contract is up. I'm only interested in what is best for us financially, and it doesn't involve her at all. Unfortunatly we have a contract that states otherwise.
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