What to Look for when Reading Reviews of Property Management Companies Online

Reviews tell a story from the perspective of the tenant and the property owner. While it would be nice to say “well I am a property owner I don’t really need to read reviews left by tenants” we would encourage you to read a balance of the reviews. As a property owner reading reviews left by tenants will help you to understand how they handle tenants who are renting your property. Reading the property owner reviews will help you to understand how they will interact with you.

While it might seem a bit tedious to read through a large volume of reviews it is a great way to understand, from a 3rd party perspective, how it could be to work with the company.

Depending on the platform for reviews (the most common being Yelp and Google My Business) a reviewer doesn’t even have to leave comments when they leave their rating. They could leave a 1-star or even a 5-star without writing a single word.

As you are evaluating the reviews of property management companies we would argue that to truly understand what it could be like to work with a company is to look beyond the pure ratings and read the commentary. Sure it is nice to see a string of 5-star reviews, but what is that really saying about the company? Likewise a number of 1-star reviews could mean there is a problem or maybe there was a common challenge that impacted renters on the same day.

If there is one truth about the internet it is that once something is put online you can find it for pretty much forever. To understand what it could be like to work with a property management company take careful note of when the reviews were left. Consider the following:

Have they not received any new reviews lately?

Are the majority of the negative reviews older?

If they haven’t received any new reviews lately, why is that? Maybe they stopped encouraging owners and renters alike to leave reviews?

For older negative reviews it could be the result of a bad hire that could no longer be with the company. Or they might be a result of a challenging economic period (i.e. great recession or COVID-19) when many businesses received negative reviews. Take time to understand the context of the negative reviews and even ask the property manager about these negative items during the interview process.

This goes for both positive and negative aspects. As you read through the reviews of potential property management companies who are the people that are most often mentioned? Is there a particular individual who is always mentioned as going above and beyond? Is the staff mentioned holistically in a positive manner? Look for trends (positive and negative) regarding the staff to help you get a greater understanding of what it is like to work with the property management company. Property management is a service focused business which means you will certainly be relying on those staff members that are mentioned in the reviews.

Should you see a specific property coordinator or manager mentioned in reviews make sure to ask if they will be the one handling your property. Or you might even ask if you can speak with them as part of the interview process. Having confidence in the individual you are assigned as well as the company will help you to have a long relationship where you and your management company benefit.

At Beach Cities Property Management we enjoy reading the reviews from tenants and property owners and encourage prospects to read our reviews prior to working with us as you will certainly get a better understanding of how we enjoy helping. When you would like to find out more on how we can earn our way to a future 5-star review from you we invite you to request our Free Rental Analysis to see how we can help.