Here's the Story

When owners connect with property managers they bring preexisting relationships with them (third parties they have already established a relationship with where the owner is the customer). Examples might include relationships like mortgage companies, insurance carriers, pest control companies, weed control providers, HOA relationships, builder/home/appliance warranties, tax assessor's, code enforcement officers, and many more. The problem is, the owner doesn’t know that you can’t take over those relationships because they are the owner’s pre-existing third party relationship.

Owners love to bully managers into taking on the management of those relationships because they are time consuming and often aggravating to deal with. They naturally think you are supposed to pick up the management of these relationships. After all, aren’t you the property manager? Isn’t that what they are paying for? They aren’t being mean, they just don’t know what a property manager does (and doesn’t do) for their fee so you need to educate them.

This document package includes:

1. Language for your management agreement explaining your fees do not cover managing the owner’s third party relationships.
2. A document for the owner explaining why you can’t manage those relationships to give to your owner either as a housekeeping document or as newsletter copy (for pre-existing clients).
3. Training for your staff on why you, as a property manager, can’t take on the management of the relationships as part of the monthly fee.
4. Power of Attorney documents for certain relationships that owners may require you to provide.

Let’s make sure you understand that you may want to take some of the relationships on, you just don’t want the owner to expect you to do it as part of their monthly management fee. It’s not part of your scope of service. You may choose to, for a fee, but not for free.

When you do want to assist the owner in managing these relationships, you should do so under a Power of Attorney. One just for utility companies, one just for HOA’s, one for the home warranty company as so on. These POA’s come with this package so you have the tool you need to document the power/authority you need to execute on your duties to manage these relationships and get paid for it.

As always these documents are fully editable and you’ll tweak them to fit your model.