Whether you are a first-time home buyer, property investor or an experienced apartment owner, Jamison Management Company can assist you with all your real estate needs. We will deal with the daily inconveniences of handling maintenance calls, pursuing late rent payments, dealing with tenant complaints and screening prospective tenants so that you don’t have to. We make sure that your properties are leased to qualified tenants and that they are properly maintained. Jamison Management Company views your property as an income-generating business. Our goal is to keep your income high and your expenses low. Because we manage multiple properties in the area and have been using our vendors for years, we are able to achieve the lowest costs when using third party contractors for any of our maintenance needs. Furthermore, we have our own in-house maintenance staff that allows us to attend to most maintenance requests very quickly and at a very reasonable cost. Our Company maintains a high standard of reliability and accountability, and gives our owners the true peace of mind that comes with knowing that their property is in the best hands possible.
If your property is 16 units or larger, you will have a resident manager responsible for the daily activities of your property, such as cleaning the common areas, posting notices, collecting rents and communicating with tenants. You will also be assigned an experienced Regional Manager familiar with the area in which your property is located. The Regional Manager will assist your resident manager and will be your main point of contact via cell phone or email. Many questions can also be answered by our staff, including bookkeepers, maintenance supervisors and staff members. You can also access your financial information online through your Owner Portal.
Your Regional Manager will do a market survey of rents charged for similar rental units in your area. We are also leasing units on a daily basis, and are very familiar with the market and changing rents. Based on this information and consultation with you, the Regional Manager will determine an asking rent that appears competitive.
Jamison Management Company markets vacancies by whatever means that have proven effective. We start the marketing process as soon as we are advised of a vacancy. We advertise on our website as well as on Zillow, Trulia, Apartments.com and many other internet listing sites which is syndicated to those sites through specialized software that we use. We update these ads frequently until your vacancy is rented. Because of our reputation many prospects contact our office for a free list of our vacancies and look at our website on a daily basis. Applicants are also able to apply directly through our website. We will also put eye catching signs and banners on your property giving rental prospects access to our services. We can also place print ads in local papers, provide tenant incentives and distribute flyers to help increase your leasing traffic. Furthermore, our resident managers leverage our large network of properties to promote our vacancies at other properties that we manage.
We provide all prospective tenants a copy of our screening criteria that must be reviewed and signed along with their completed application. If you are interested in modifying the standards for your property, we would need to know of any changes you would like to make in advance. Otherwise, our Company typically screens and approves the tenants, as our staff is trained in issues such as credit screening and fair housing. Our software has strict parameters for determining credit worthiness. In addition, we check all applicant’s rental history and verify employment. We are very careful in choosing tenants, as we have to interact with them on a daily basis. In other words, it’s to both our advantage to choose carefully!
When a new tenant moves in and pays a security deposit, we will record the security deposit on your financials and then use the funds for any required operating expenses. When your tenant vacates, we will provide all required accounting of the tenant’s security deposit within the time legally allotted, usually within 21 days of the tenant moving out. If there are damages they will be deducted from the security deposit. We are allowed by law to charge against the resident’s deposit, rent, damages above normal wear and tear, and cleaning. Any deposit refund will then be issued to the tenant out of the operating income for that month. Unless agreed to in your management agreement, we do not hold onto your tenant’s security deposits.
When a property first comes under our management, an interior and exterior inspection is scheduled as soon as possible to determine if there are any health and safety issues which need to be addressed. During this inspection, we review your property for water leaks, mold and mildew, water heaters being double strapped, for any faulty sprinkler heads and that all units have the required smoke detectors in each room as required by law. At that time we also inspect the property for any trip hazards and required maintenance. If there is a vacancy, the property will be shown as appointments and open houses are scheduled. Once the property is full and the initial inspection has been done, the Property Supervisor will visit the property regularly, at least once a month. All interiors of units are inspected a minimum of once a year, but preferably twice a year.
Most of our tenants pay their rent online through their tenant portal. However, if they have an onsite manager, they can also pay rent through their Onsite, mail their payment or deliver a payment to our office. When rent is received it is immediately placed in our trust account. Any expenses incurred by your property will be paid out of the rent collected during the month. The remaining funds, less the required reserve balance, will be distributed to our owners around the 25th of every month via check or electronic transfer. Your monthly financial statements will be emailed to you around the fourth business day of the following month.
Jamison Management Company is very aggressive in our rent collections. We allow a 3-day grace period for making rent payments. However, if rent has not been received from a tenant by the 4th of the month, we will serve a 3-day Notice to Pay or Quit. We do our best to work with tenants to keep units occupied, but if a tenant has lost their job, fails to communicate with us or cannot make a definitive payment arrangement, Jamison Management Company works with a highly experienced eviction attorney to regain possession of the unit. Our attorneys are reasonable in cost, and work exclusively with management companies.
When you hire Jamison Management Company, we become responsible for your property 24 hours a day. We have a 24 hour emergency number available to our tenants and there is always a senior staff member on call to quickly address emergencies. We also have access to vendors who can respond in an emergency, no matter what the hour.
Yes. We will be happy to continue to use your vendors upon request. However, one advantage of our management is that we have developed relationships with vendors, such as plumbers, painters and carpet installers, who charge low rates and are reliable, because we give them a significant volume of business and always pay their bills timely. As a result, our owners benefit from these vendors excellent services and prices.
Jamison Management always attempts to improve your bottom line, and one way is to control expenses and help keep your maintenance costs low. For major repairs, such as re-piping or re-roofing, several bids are obtained, and we will get your written approval. However, if there is an emergency, such as a burst water heater or a routine repair is requested, such as a leaking faucet or broken toilet, then our Company will go ahead with the work and keep you informed. For all other repairs that exceed the approval authority agreed to in the management agreement, we will seek our Owner’s approval before doing the work. In addition, if it is discovered that a tenant caused the damage, we charge the tenant back for reimbursement of the repair.
Our clients can now access their financials directly through their Owner Portal, which you can log into from the Login menu on our website. There will be a variety of financial reports available for you to review. All information is updated on a real time basis as our system is hosted online. You can use your portal to see what rents have been collected, what bills have been paid, review copies of the invoices, review service issues for your property, make contributions, and review your cash balance in our Trust account. Your financial package for the prior month will be emailed to you around the 4th business day of the subsequent month. These reports are easy to read, and can be tailored to your specific needs. In each report, at a minimum we include Statement of Cash Flows with the Current Month and Year-to-Date balances summarized by general ledger account and major expense categories. You will also receive the general ledger detail for all transactions during the month. In addition, you will receive two types of Rent Rolls that explain how much each tenant paid during the month along with the security deposit amount, move-in date, and the last rent increase that was made. Your monthly financials can also be found on your Owner Portal in the History/Notes section of your portal.
Our maintenance fees are very low compared to other in-house maintenance teams and compared to third party contractor fees. We find that poor management can have a very high cost. As a result, we are committed to providing our owners and tenants excellent customer service and expertise at reasonable prices.