Janell K.

Lately, I've been coming across a common theme when reading and it has to do with the collective mind, the power of the media and the concept of the humanization of technology. From social to political to environmental, our perspectives are no longer controlled entirely by those that hold the purse-strings. Our world is moving towards a true global community whether or not we like the pieces that make up the whole platform.

In my daily life working with web-based property management software, I am surprised how many times I will get the same question, in one day, over and over, from different customers in all parts of the country. It's as if the whole property management community got together and came up with a list of what is suppose to be relevant for the day! In one of the videos below it is stated that there are more people on Facebook today than were alive 200 years ago. Think for a moment about how quickly a topic can go viral on Facebook and you can see where I'm headed.

I'm reading a book by Bryan Welch called "Beautiful and Abundant" and in it he speaks of a paradigm shift for effecting change in our individual lives and the world at large. He offers up an example of the fashion industry and of how, almost instantly, a new trend can reach every corner of the globe and become part of our culture. We all grasp that an idea can spread almost instantly via the internet, however we are beginning to grasp that this idea can lead to an immediate action. Action is power. Overnight, the world can change. Overnight, the world can put into action something it finds valuable.

In the videos below, you will feel the power of media. You will be moved by their message. While the causes below are enormous in scope, the message is this: Your actions matter & you are powerful. While we are not saving lives, electing powerful leaders nor shifting environmental policy in our daily lives in property management, we are touching people. We are influencing people in how & where they live, how to spend their money and in turn we are influencing the world with how we spend money made off of these people. Take a moment to think about your place in this web. How are you connecting? What tools are you using to connect? What tools are you using to profit? Do you inspire? Do you motivate? How effective are you?

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Janell K. is a member of Rentec Direct, a web-based property management software program offering Landlords and Professional Managers tools for tracking income and expenses, payment processing , tenant screening and online advertising.

If you have ever had the joy of a "For Cause" eviction, you know how important it can be to keep detailed notes of the reasons you are evicting. Yes, you may have followed stringent tenant screening guidelines, tried your best to find the most qualified tenant and still end up with a bad apple you need to evict. Failing to provide proper documentation can end up wasting your time and money, not to mention a judge not signing off on the judgement, and you having to live with a deadbeat even longer.

In my property management career, I have had to evict tenants for reasons ranging from violent behavior, indecent exposure, child pornography rings, racist behavior, drug trafficing, creating a fire pit in a living room, intimidation, non-payment of rent... and thankfully I had a well-seasoned property manager train me to document the hell out of any and all suspcious activity. And, might I say, I managed high-end properties with "well-to-do" folks and even they were not exempt from the title of low-life needing to be evicted.

Keeping a daily log was part of my routine but I know many managers in the biz who did not document activity (I would hear their sob-stories at industry meetings...) and they had a heck of a time evicting their deadbeats. In those cases, not only the manager suffers, but so do the neighbors. And, I can't imagine the property owners had much confidence in their lack of managerial skills.

In our property management software, we have a location for landlords/managers to document tenant activity or notes. What I love about this option is that it provides a running log with dates and times that can be used, if need be, in filing an eviction.

With a web-based rental software program, you don't have to worry about losing your paper-log or risk your computer crashing. I highly recommend that, if you're not already do so, you adopt a methodical and reliable system for documenting tenant activity. You'll be grateful you did when you're standing in a courtroom.

From time-to-time, around our property, I see a carpent ant trail. I have done my research and know that if I follow the trail, eventually I will find a nest. I know there can be several satelite nests that form away from the "mother-load." The trail I see always appears in a similar location and I have followed the trail to a bark-dusted area by a creek bordering our property. I figured the ants were just eating the bark dust as I hadn't seen a "nest" anywhere. But, as a preventative measure, I would dust the perimeter of our home and the ant trail and the barked area with diatamaceous earth (I'm one of "those" types that doesn't believe in standard pesticide use.) The ants would disappear and re-appear every so often, and I'd go about my little dusting ritual. No biggie, right?

Last month my husband informed me he was going to drop one of the trees near our house and the creek that looked like it was dying. I took photos of the tree falling, cheered on his lumber-jack efforts and went back to work. Later in the evening, I thought I would email our family that lives across the country a photo of the tree falling. When I connected my camera to my computer to upload the photos, I was horrified!!! After all of the photos I had taken, there was one video. One nightmarish video that made me scream!!!

Appearantly my husband didn't want to tell me just yet about what he discovered. He knows just how freaked out I am about carpenter ant home invasions (I have, afterall, in my years of property managment, seen what they can do to a building.) Now I'm sure the hounds-of-hell that poured out of that tree near our house are looking for a new home and I'm not ready for 10 million roommates.

Can you imagine if this was on one of the properties you're working with? Good lord! I recommend you shoot videos & share with owners whenever you have the chance as it really can drive home an issue to a reluctant property owner. Thanks to my husband's handy video work, there is NO question in my mind that we've got a problem!

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Janell K. is a member of Rentec Direct, a web-based property management software program offering Landlords and Professional Managers tools for tracking income and expenses, payment processing , tenant screening and online advertising.

If you're like me and dreaming of birds chirping, flowers blooming and the sun shining, you'll understand where I'm coming from (and those of you below 40 degrees longitude... I covet your glorious and continual access to warmth!) For an Oregonian, Wisconsonite or Idahoan, we live for the moment the tulips bloom and day the sun warms our face when we walk to get our mail. Springtime is winter's mistress. We are desparate!

So capitolize on it!

Don't wait until every house out there is wearing her prettiest Easter dress or you'll be one among many lovelies for sale or rent! Who says you can't wear white shoes now? Do it! As another AR blogger, Steve Bachman, just wrote "we eat with our eyes first." Put those fresh flowers in a vase on the kitchen counter, by the driveway entrance and in a pot by the front door (even if they die in two weeks.) Wash those windows clean of winter's mess. Powerwash those pavers. Remove every last brown twig, leaf, dirt clump or debris that blew in over the past few months. Paint the window trim and front door when the first slightly warm day appears. Clean up your act! We want to believe that there's a sanctuary out there... just waiting for us. One that speaks nothing of all these layers of clothes and clogged gutters and muddy shoes and endless winter clean-up we dread. Please give it to us!

And when you're done making your home look like it's ahead of Mother Nature by 30 days, advertise the heck of it! Snap every flowery, clean photo you can and blast it through every online property advertising site you can think of for all the internet to see. In my daily life, I help landlords and property managers reach over 20 online syndications with a click of a button, all while automatically updating their online listings page. I wish I saw more flowers on those listings...

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Janell K. is a member of Rentec Direct, a web-based rental software program offering Landlords and Professional Managers tools for tracking income and expenses, payment processing, tenant screening and online advertising.

Back when I was a kid... we had to use an envelope and a stamp to get documents to an owner or future tenant.

Well, maybe we had fax machines, but those were annoying. And then email came along and that was at least better. But there were those folks who would swear "I never got your email..."

This past week the web-based rental software company I work with just released a great new feature that makes sharing documents with owners and tenants a breeze! On-line file sharing.

One of the many benefits of using our software to manage your properties is free access to Owner & Tenant online portals. These portals allow owners to view a snapshot of their properties through graphs, account ledgers, summary notices and now they are able to see any file you want to share with them, be it invoices, photos, even videos. The same applies to tenants. All that time you spend on the phone with owners answering questions can be drastically cut down simply by allowing your property owners access to information online. And think how happy they will be to have access to this information from anywhere they can access the internet. With a few clicks, you've stored the data in your online file library, the owner's online portal and the tenant's file.

Lickety-split!