Property operations
A non-custodial operations arrangement for a select group of qualified owners, from a single rental house to a five-unit building: I take on the day-to-day contact and coordination, you keep control of every dollar. I take on very few of these, and not every owner qualifies.
When owners of small buildings tell me what they want, it is almost never “someone to hold my money.” It is this: stop being the person the tenants call. No more Sunday-morning boiler calls, no more chasing a plumber, no more being the one who has to say no, no more being the face of every unpopular decision in a building where you may also be a neighbor. That is the thing worth paying for, and it is what this arrangement is built to deliver.
Conventional property management is custodial: the manager collects your rent into their account, pays your vendors out of it, holds your security deposits, and sends you a statement. That model is well established and for many properties it is the right one.
This arrangement works from a single-family rental up to a five-unit building. A house you rent out and would rather stop managing yourself is a perfectly good fit — in some ways the cleanest one.
What I offer is a different shape, not a discount version of the same thing. I take the operating half — the contact, the coordination, the judgment, the knowledge of the building — without the custodial half. Your money never passes through me. Your vendors invoice you and you pay them. You remain the managing agent of record and your registrations stay in your name.
It is narrower than traditional management. For the right owner and the right building, that also makes it better — because what you lose is apparatus and what you gain is someone who genuinely knows your property.
The trade is real and I’d rather name it than sell around it. You give up a custodial manager’s accounting apparatus. What you get in exchange is far more direct insight into your own property: you see the rent arrive and you see what the plumber charged, and the person handling your building is one broker who has been in it, not a rotating queue.
Most of these engagements begin with a hard look at the property before anything ongoing is agreed — what it earns against what it should, what condition is costing you, what turnover is costing you, and what would have to change. Sometimes that evaluation is the whole engagement and no ongoing arrangement follows, which is a perfectly good outcome. That work is described here.
Because holding other people’s money brings trust accounting, reconciliation and a set of obligations that have to be paid for, and on a building this size they buy you less than they cost. Keeping the money in your hands means you see the rent arrive, you see what the plumber charged, and there is no statement to reconcile because there is nothing to reconcile. If you would genuinely rather someone else held the money, that is a legitimate preference — it is simply a different service from this one, and you should hire it as such.
I am not going to sell this to you as the cheap option, because that isn’t the argument and it isn’t always true. What it is, is a narrower scope with a fee to match the scope — and for the right building, a better fit than a broader service that costs more and knows your property less well. The fee is quoted flat and in writing before anything starts, and it is negotiable. Compare it against what you are actually getting, not against a headline percentage.
No. Vendors invoice you directly, at their price, and you can see every invoice because they are addressed to you. That is a large part of why the arrangement is structured this way.
I document it from the first missed payment, keep the correspondence in order, and get the file to your attorney in a state they can actually use. I don’t give legal advice and I don’t appear for you. What I can do is make sure the paperwork you need exists and is dated, which is usually the difference between a straightforward proceeding and an expensive one.
Few, and I would rather say no than do it badly. This only works because I know each building personally — the boiler, the roof, the neighbours, which tenant calls about everything and which one never calls at all. Scale that past a handful and it becomes a call center, at which point you should hire a call center.
Yes, and it’s a common sequence — particularly with estate and guardianship properties that get retained rather than sold, or with an investor buying their first small building. Each engagement is its own written agreement.
We just wanted to thank you for all your hard work and effort selling our various homes. As real estate speculators and mortgage professionals we have quite a bit of knowledge in regards to the real estate market.
Diallo took over the renovation and sale of our parents’ properties and carried through even past the final sale and continued making necessary contacts in order to finalize unforeseen administrative details.
Units, location, condition, and what is currently annoying you about running it. I’ll tell you honestly whether this arrangement fits or whether you want a conventional manager.
