First Rate Property Management’s vacancy rate continues to be low and I am predicting that the Boise area’s rental market will continue to improve. With rents and vacancy improving, we should start seeing other rental attributes improving as well. It’s a nice trend to be seeing.

Investment Market:
Distress sells continue to dominate the 4 plex and duplex sales and the main reason for values to continue to decline. However, with the interest rates starting what I believe to be an upward trend, I’m thinking NOW very well may represent the best time to buy. If you are looking to buy please take a look at our current listed investment properties. For those of you who I have been working with and trying to find the absolute best deal around, be ready for me to be pushing to jump on some properties as they come available. I just fear that the interest rate increases will hurt cash flow more than the potential of actually being able to buy something later at a bit lower price.

GOOGLE Reviews
When you do a search for property management or rentals in Boise, often the first thing you see is our GOOGLE Local Listing. This listing allows anyone to post a review. Over the past few years, we have had past and disgruntled tenants post negative reviews. There are always two sides to every story, but I can tell you that in all these cases, the tenants were upset with the enforcement of their rental agreement and the fact that we charged them for tenant related cleaning and damages. Since prospective tenants may read these reviews and chose not to rent from First Rate Property Management, we are requesting that our owners post positive reviews written in a way that a tenant could relate to. To post a positive review, please click on here. With positive reviews I am hoping that it helps us fill our vacancies.

On-Line Statements May Change Again:
When we went to online statements years ago, our clients loved the 24/7 access, but the actual statements left a lot to be desired. Our online statements were created through the partnership of our management software, PROMAS and our web host, Homerentals.net. My requests to improve the online statements were ignored. To meet the needs of our clients, First Rate Property Management went out and hired the developers of RentalHomePros to create a new website that interfaced with our management software. This was no easy feat, nor was it cheap, but the end result seemed to make our clients happy. Well, our software manufacturer evidently didn’t like us going around them so they are making changes so that we no longer can do that on our own. We know that changes are on the horizon, we just don’t know how much. I just wanted to apologize upfront.

Additionally, we may take this opportunity to go ahead and change software. Its something I’ve been wanting to do for many years now. Two other companies actually contacted me years ago and asked me everything I didn’t like about my current system and what I wanted to see in a new system and they actually implemented all of it. Even now, they still contact me asking for recommendations. Plus we still have concerns with our current statements. For example, if we create a work order and put an estimate cost of $250 for the repair, the system will automatically hold that money back from the owner. There is no entry on the G/L or statement and no explanation; its just held back. So we are currently testing several new systems. Trust me, when we make the change, it will be for the better. If you would like to see a demo of these other systems and what the reports look like, let me know, your input would be appreciated.

Tony’s Travels:
Well, I returned for a few days and now head to Oahu to teach Tenancy, then to Dallas for the SC NARPM Conference, and then wrap up my May travel in Spokane Washington for the NARPM NW Regional Conference. The office is doing very good in my absence.