Jan. 14/14 – I started doing property management in 1990 as a favor to a friend, Phoebe, who was moving back to HK. From managing this one house, my portfolio expanded to over 100 houses at the peak of the business. As property manager, I acted on behalf of the owners to rent their property out and to collect the rent for them. I also took care of arranging for all the repair and maintenance work. One factor for this success were the referrals I got from existing clients. However, because property management was just a side job for me, it got to a point that I had to turn down new clients completely.
But the bigger factor for my success was the fact that I only had to deal with less than twenty owners since each owned more than a few houses or condos. I can’t imagine having to deal with 100 owners and giving them the service they deserved. This also gave me the opportunity to prove my ability so much so that I was able to build a strong relationship with my clients that, in turn, merited their trust in me.
For each of the property entrusted to me, I had more responsibility than if it were my own. It was important that I chose the right tenants because I knew how hard it was to kick bad tenants out due to the strict renter protection laws here. Because my full time job was with the bank, doing a credit check for potential tenants was not difficult for me. However, it was still important for me to do character check. I needed to be assured that the potential tenant would take care of the property well. So, I would call previous landlords, employers and personal references. Sometimes, I would get doubtful responses from landlords and employers. Then, I would go the extra mile to confirm whether these landlords and employers were real. I would check the addresses in the titles and would check company directories. At times, I discovered fake employers, fake landlords; they were all friends or acquaintances who were notified to put in good words for the aspiring tenant. The challenge here was that it was not always easy to find the balance between getting the place rented so owners don’t lose a month’s rent and getting the right tenants.
Apart from this challenge, female property managers also face more risks than male property managers do. Unlike big property management companies who do showings at certain times and on certain days only, I was willing to meet and show houses to potential tenants even at 10pm when it was completely dark. I remember the times I felt very scared showing a property to a man or a couple of men since I had heard of many rape incidents happening to female realtors while they were doing a showing. To protect myself, I usually waited in the car and whenever I would see that I would be meeting a man or a couple of men, I would call my best friend and give him the car plate of the potential tenant. Then I would have him call me 5 minutes later so that I could tell him, right in front of those guys, how I was doing and who I was with. If I didn’t answer the phone, then he would call the police for me.
Also, unlike other property management companies out there, another thing I did that was not usual was that I would use my personal cheque to deposit payments to the owner’s account instead of directly depositing the cheque I received from the tenant. I would do this on the first day of each month. By doing this, I ensured that clients didn’t have to worry about bouncing checks, which I felt was just too much for them since they were overseas. It was my job to chase after tenants for check replacement.
As a result of the way I conducted my business, my clients really respected my level of integrity and responsibility. In the end, when the real estate market was strong, they ended up selling their rental properties and instead of taking the money overseas, they decided to leave it with me to manage it for them. In the later years when I decided to invest heavily in real estate, these funds really came in handy. The lesson I learned here was that it’s ok to go out of one’s way to make life easier for others because we do not know what the future holds for us as karma. In this case, I was the one who benefited from the extra services I extended to the landlords. They trusted me so much to let me manage their money which allowed me to invest it in the real estate market years later.