“Individual glory is insignificant when compared to achieving victory as a team”
—Dot Richardson
Submitted by Alex
RentToday’s very own Mia Melle was interviewed for an upcoming book by 50 Interviews. Her interview is the 3rd for the book that should be released sometime in 2010.
Mia Melle will be the third of 25 interviews in Volume I of “50 Interviews: Successful Property Managers”. Mia is a very successful property manager in Chino, California specializing in single-family residences. “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.” -Mia Melle (West Coast Property Specialists, Inc.)
Recently, our very own Mia Melle was interviewed for Lowe’s Commercial Services about optimizing rental pricing.
Property managers need to monitor twists and turns in the housing market constantly. It’s important to stay on top of the latest multiple listing service (MLS) reports, classified ads and other resources, says Mia Melle, president of operations for Ontario-based RentToday.us. This information will give you a sense of what competing properties offer in terms of location, amenities and other features. In the past, unrented properties were always more expensive than those that were occupied, she says. But the current economy has spun this trend on its head. “Now, we’re seeing the available properties are priced lower than the leased ones, because rental values are continuing to decline,” Melle says.
Everyone here at RentToday.us would like to take a minute to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving! And, as a quick reminder, the RentToday.us offices will be closed Thanksgiving and Friday, November 27th.
Normal service shall resume on Monday, November 30th, 2009. We are pretty sure we’ll all be shopped out and won’t even be able to mention the word turkey.
“If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven’t done anything today”
—Lou Holtz
Contributed by Jaimee
Whether you’ve had a rental for years or are just jumping in the rental game, you need to know what Fair Housing is and what you need to do to stay in compliance! Especially in our great state of California, Fair Housing ain’t no joke and it definitley should not be taken lightly! Fair Housing violation start at $10,000 per occurence and if you get sued, it will be by the State of California and trust me, it’s not going to be cheap.
My company, Renttoday.us is a property management firm located in Ontario, California. We’ve managed thousands of homes throughout Southern California over the past 10 years or so and the one thing we come across the most when dealing with owners who self-manage or who want to help in the process is Fair Housing violations.
A new feature of the RentToday.us blog. We call it our quote of the day.
Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.
—Margaret Thatcher
Contributed by Halley.
One of the best commercials we’ve seen in a while!
Here at RentToday, we get excuses all of the time. It would seem we aren’t the only ones. From this story we have found a few that we haven’t heard. Yet.
3. ‘My grandmother died … again.’ That’s strange: According to our files, your grandmother has died six times recently. At least according to the reasons you’ve provided each time you couldn’t pay the rent. The sudden need to pay for a funeral is a common claim for inability to pay, managers say.
There are some great ones there. Oh yea, everyone here has read these already, so don’t try to use them on us.
Press Release November 18, 2009 – Fannie Mas has announced on Nov. 5th, 2009 that they will begin to offer leases to homeowners occupying REO properties. This is contrary to the previous practice of issuing the owner a 3 day notice to vacate, completing a quick trash out, and throwing it on the market for sale or letting it sit in inventory gathering dust. This may seem like a new idea but those who deal in rentals have been pushing this scenario from day one of the foreclosure crisis and the smart ones have taken action in anticipation of this historic event.
The new owner lease back program is welcomed news for homeowners in distress who may be able to take advantage of this program. It’s also good news for one sector of the real estate industry in particular, property management firms. “Property Management has been one bright spot in the real estate industry that doesn’t get much attention” says Mia Melle, Broker and President of WCPS, Inc. which operates Renttoday.us a residential property management firm based out of Ontario, CA. Melle stated that for the last few years, property owners whose values have declined turned to property management firms such as Renttoday.us to find qualified tenants to lease their homes and create some type of cash flow while they wait for the market to recover. Now it seems that trend is spreading, banks and even government institutions like Fannie Mae are following suit and deciding that liquidating for pennies on the dollar is not the answer.
