The One in Which I Rant Unceasingly About Condo Management

So when trying to manage these HORRIBLE condos, my goal is to get good, competent work done on the places for a price that is in my budget. I do not necessarily say for the BEST price because I would not want to find the best priced electrician, for example, who happens to be unlicensed and a complete boob and then the condos catch fire and people die.

So, I need,

1) competent work,
2) a good price and
3) no people die.


This is a complex formula. It means that I can't just call up companies that do interior painting and say, "I need to hire a painter for this job, what is your price?" and then call 3 other companies and ask them the same thing and pick the cheapest one. (This is what I suspect property management companies do when something needs to be hired out and that's why we never could make any money when we used a property management company)


There is no WAY that hiring a company to do any work is in my budget.(One guy told me that to paint a 600 square foot condo with plain white would be a $1900 job. That seems ridiculous to me. It's equal to 4 months of what we collect in rent on that place.)

So, I have to hire people. I have to go online and find everyday people who are willing to do the various work that I need done. Then I need to negotiate prices with these people. I, of course, have NO skills and so must guess at what the work is worth and what supplies it will require. (Why use ME to manage ANY properties if I don't know stuff? Because I am available and because I am willing to SHOP for people in our budget instead of hiring people OUTSIDE of the budget and sending my dad a BILL every month instead of a CHECK. A check is what you hope to receive from your rental investments not a BILL every month for a year.)

Here's the biggest problem. The people I find who are competent enough to do the work and also willing the do the work in our price range are DIFFICULT to work with. Usually the reason they are willing to work in our price range is because they are:

1) Desperate for money.

This means they will be able to start the work I'm asking but only if I can loan them some money for gas on their first day of work.

2) Unable to hold down other jobs.

This is because they are so irresponsible they never show up when they say they will show up and maybe they will do the work you hired them to do and maybe they will not. You need to totally double check their work to make sure it's what you agreed on for the price. Also, you frequently end up waiting 90 minutes for them to show up and get a key from you. You hang around that long because they've texted you 3 times saying they are 5 minutes away. Alternately, you RACE out of a meeting at work early because they suddenly texted you and said they are waiting at the condos for you even though your appointment with them is not until the following day.

3) Unable to make coherent conversation and mingle with the other humans.

This means that you will never understand exactly what information they are giving you and what information they are asking of you. They make half sentences and then stop and switch to another sentence and you're never exactly sure what predicate they were ABOUT to say when they made the switch.



I know that it would be great to work with someone who would do the work, then send me an invoice and then I send them a check. But, it's not like that. They expect to call me and say, "I'm gonna be done here in about 15 minutes which is a day earlier than I thought I'd be done, so can you meet me with a check as soon as I'm done?" No. I can't. I'm an HOUR from you and I actually have a life. I don't sit at a desk located on the property just poised and waiting for your call. I have other people and children counting on me to be other places. I can't be there to pay you or meet with you to answer questions or get you keys or get keys back from you at whatever moment you decide it's convenient for you. I need to make a plan with you and then stick to that plan. But these people I hire do not do that.

They also do not respect the boundaries I have asked them to respect. I have my phone number that is for condo related calls. Once ANYONE I work with gets any other number of mine (which sometimes happens if I get an urgent text and must call from my cell phone while I'm out) then they go crazy calling that number if they need to reach me. If someone gets Ric's number at any time, then they call MY condo number, then MY regular number, then Ric's number in a rabid attempt to reach someone. Nevermind that I JUST received their text from their first call and am calling them back IMMEDIATELY but can't get through to them because they are calling 4 other numbers dying to reach me.

I explain this process to people. They don't pay attention. They assume no matter what I tell them, that my LIFE is about these condos. They think I don't have plans with my family or other obligations or FORBID that maybe I'm somewhere that I can't pick up a call right away and they'll just have to be inconvenienced waiting for me to meet them at the appointed time instead of an hour earlier.

The OTHER horrible thing about these condos? It's NEVER enough. Even if I accomplish MIRACULOUS FEATS of getting work done within my budget, there is still someone who says, "Seems like we could have done that cheaper or easier." Really?? Well, then, you are WELCOME to go ahead and do that yourself next time. Seriously??? Like I NEED all of this hours and hours of work and stress every day for a stupid $85 a month.


Why don't I just quit? Because I can't. There's no one else to do it instead. Which means that it would be up to my dad to do it. And it's way too much stress for him. And if it's Herculean for me to manage them from 1 hour away, it's impossible for him to manage them from another state. So, he'd have to hire a company to manage them. Then, he'd start getting bills every month again which means that every month the management company uses up ALL the rent he's earned on maintenance then also spent even more than that on maintenance.

So, I do it for my parents. Who deserve it.

I wish I did it better. And I wish at times that I do make some small miracle happen, that it made my dad happy and didn't make him say, "You had to HIRE someone to do that? I could have done that myself for 25 cents!"