Speaker 1 (00:02):

Welcome to Canada's Property Management Podcast, your number one resource for investing, managing, and maximizing the value of your real estate assets. And now, here's your hosts. Carla Browne and Adrian Schulz, Canada's rental property experts.

Adrian Schulz (00:18):

In today's episode, we're talking about why a 24/7 resident call center is critical for your investment property. Now, there are hundreds, if not thousands of property management companies across Canada, some have after hours call centers, some don't, some have different variations or hybrids, but in today's episode, we want to talk about why as a network, as a national brand, we believe that 24/7 coverage is critical to investment property owners. Carla, you've been in the business a long time, what are your thoughts?

Carla Browne (01:00):

Well, there's two sides of it. There is the tenant or resident side of it, and there's the investor side of it. So let's concentrate first on that resident side, and then we can talk about some of the advantages from an investor standpoint because we concentrate on those sometimes but really this one boils down to the residents. This is one way that residents understand we care. They have an expectation when they are renting a property that when something goes wrong, that they're going to be able to speak to somebody. Because when you have an emergency in your property, or what you think is an emergency, you do not always want to send that in on the portal and send a picture. You want something to deal with, this is like, if your water heater is leaking, it's a 911 call to them almost. It's an emergency, most of them don't know what to do.They need to speak to somebody.

Carla Browne (01:53):

So having a 24/7 resident call center is so important to that whole experience that you're going to give the resident. And when they know that somebody is going to do deal with that call at 2:00 AM, when they're calling and that you're going to have somebody out, disaster services to start sucking up the water, and you're going to have the insurance people starting to come through and a plumber there to fix it all within literally minutes or hours from when that call was made, when you send them that renewal Adrian, put yourself in that tenant position. How likely are you going to renew your lease with me?

Adrian Schulz (02:30):

Well, it goes without saying that the better quality of life and the better resident experience that a tenant has, the more likely they are to stay. And of course also to be amenable to reasonable rent increases, right? If they're getting the quality of service, I think we're going to have longer term tendency relationships and a much higher likelihood of reasonable rent increases to be accepted by the person living there.

Carla Browne (03:01):

Yeah, the communication is just one of those things that we deal with day in and day out, is the one thing that tenants will complain about if they've come from a bad experience on a rental property, it all boils down to communication. This is the most important piece of communication that you can put into your property management business to help with your tenants. And I would say like in our business, you don't have a lot of emergencies, thank goodness, but they do happen and when they do happen, you're so thankful that you have that 24/7 emergency line that can help the tenant through. Because that emergency line in our case, it is somebody who has access to our software, it's somebody that has access to all of our vendors, they understand what constitute an emergency, what doesn't constitute an emergency, so these are key things.

Carla Browne (03:52):

They just can't hire a 24/7 answering service, so they actually can talk the tenant through the problem that they're having as well, which is definitely a calming aspect, right? If they're dealing with something that they're a little bit nervous about, as there's a fire, hopefully they call the fire department or if there's a fire, but sometimes they call our emergency or 24/7 resident call center. But that person who answers them will tell them to calmly please call 911 and get the fire department there. So these are good things, but again, it's the communication and really today, not that tenants are demanding, I never want to put... That's not how I want to phrase this, but they have an expectation. And that expectation is that we're going to look after them. Sometimes they think that they're living in a hotel and they want to have a straight direct line to us. You have to work with those kinds of things, but the communication is so important. So I don't want to downplay with that last comment by no means.

Adrian Schulz (04:44):

You mentioned 911, I think the last two Valentine's Days we opted to stay home because we have small kids and I cooked my wife a steak because she likes steak, right? And you go and look what's the best way to do it while it's with a very, very hot grilling pan or I think griddle pan Le Creuset I think they're called. So anyway, the last two Valentines, I did this and both times I created so much smoke from my high temperature that our alarm system went off and the firemen came. Now, I told her that that was part of her Valentine's gift.

Carla Browne (05:21):

I was going to say how romantic?

Adrian Schulz (05:23):

Yeah. But she suggested that either I should learn to cook or how to better use the alarm system. I don't know why that story came to my mind. But back to the call center, and by the way the alarm system call center was very helpful and they congratulated me on the entertainment I provided my wife. But as a rental property owner, why when I'm selecting a property management company, is it important that I get a understanding of their 24/7 coverage? What questions should I ask, and what are the costs? How does it affect me as a rental property owner?

Carla Browne (06:03):

Yeah. So the cost that would be built into the management fee, if a management company has a 24/7 call center, they would've built that into their fee structure, and as an investor, you do understand that is a cost. That there's definitely cost to have at 24/7 somebody answering the phone, and being able to call. We're not charged per call for the most part. There's definitely a call to have somebody connected to your software program. So, you want to know how it works because you want to make sure they're going to mitigate damage. So, I remember there was a call that came in on a property. Unfortunately, we just recently took it over and it was a beautiful property. And this is why I remember it. A beautiful property built in the 70s but for whatever reason, it had boiler heat and floor heating all around it. Anyways, the boiler went. So now water in the middle of winter at 2:00 AM is flooding through this house literally just flooding.

Carla Browne (06:58):

And if you are the investor, you want to know that not only somebody is going to deal with that, but somebody's going to deal with it really quickly. In this case, the investors were out of country. So, our call center answered the call, got the disaster services there right away, got somebody to deal with the actual boiler there right away, the next day we were able to already get the insurance involved and we were able to handle everything and I could confidently say to the owner, we were able to get somebody there within a half an hour. So we were able to mitigate as much as the damage as possible, so even though they... In this case, they had some personal stuff in a lower level bedroom, I could assure them that we got everything out as quickly as possible.

Carla Browne (07:38):

So, from the peace of mind that this can give an investor is huge. When you hire a property management company, yes you expect that they're going to be there 24/7, but if they do not have a 24/7 call center, who is answering the phone in the middle of the night, do you really think the property manager, the person is staying awake 24/7 in case there's a problem with your property? They can't, right?

Adrian Schulz (08:00):

Yes, not possible.

Carla Browne (08:00):

And I remember as a running a property management company, I did make that I would say initial error of not having a 24/7 call center right off the bat, and so I was the 24/7 call center. And once I hired it, I was like, "Oh my! Why did I not do this sooner?" Now I have the peace of mind that I don't have to worry about if the phone rings, am I going to hear it? Somebody's answering it, somebody's answering it. They're making sure that something's happening. So, I would say from investor standpoint, ask them how they deal with emergencies, if a tenant calls and it's not an emergency, how do they handle it? Because after hour calls are more expensive, so you don't want to send a plumber out to do something that could essentially wait until the next day. So this is where that training component really comes into play.

Adrian Schulz (08:45):

And I think that the level of integration that real property management has with the resident call center is pretty unique. It's not just an after hours call center, it is fully integrated with the RPM systems that assures that there's a systematic process that is applied to those emergency calls when the need arises.

Carla Browne (09:09):

Yeah. It's a question that you have to ask because if it is a call center that answers the call then that is just going to pick up the phone and call me, what have I actually accomplished there? Right?

Adrian Schulz (09:19):

Just a filter, yeah.

Carla Browne (09:21):

That didn't really do much. So, yeah, it needs to be somebody that has the ability to get in there and start doing the work for your company or for you as an investor and as an investor on your own, you wouldn't necessarily have that same level of 24/7 call center, you wouldn't. It just wouldn't make financial sense, but if you're hiring a property management company, that would be an expectation that I would have.

Adrian Schulz (09:45):

Yeah. Now that's real property management.

Speaker 1 (09:48):

Thanks for listening to Canada's Property Management Podcast. If you like this episode, please subscribe and give us a rating which will help us reach more listeners, until next time, connect with us on social media and online at realpm.ca.