You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy?
Grandma property manager.
“I had a bypass 2 months ago,” she says, her voice trailing off. “I think if I hadn’t gone to the E.R. that afternoon…”
I listen to her words trail off on the other end of the phone.
“I can’t even believe you’re 79 years old?” I say with stunned disbelief.
Little Betty suddenly laughs a chortling, guttural laugh.
“Yes. And I feel every bit of it this year.”
Her voice is coarse like wood that needs to be sanded.
“Why are you still doing it?” I ask.
“I know, right. It’s a thankless business,” she says.
“Really?” I say not sure what she’s getting at.
I don’t know a thing about managing properties. But Little Betty does.
Little Betty is a real estate assassin with a big key ring.
She is a wife, a grandmother, a southern business woman. Little Betty knows a little something about everything. She can paint. She can wire. She can rent, lease and evict.
She’s a life long manager and working long, hard, thankless hours, somehow give her days purpose.
“Home Owner’s Associations just think we can move cars out of the street. We’re not the police,” she says. “They want it done now. They just don’t get it.”
She sounds fed up, like a little old lady rain cloud about to drop an arsenal of thunder on a boy scout jamboree.
Little Betty is a soldier, a property managing warrior. She’s on the front lines, pulling up to your front door with a smart phone in one hand and a pan of brownies in the other.
Little Betty is a throw back to a generation gone by, a generation when people cared about one another. She reminds me of a doctor you would find on Little House on the Prairie.
Instead of a covered wagon, she drives an SUV. But the concept is the same. Go beyond the call of duty, and treat people like you would want to be treated.
It’s a good business model whether you are managing properties or baking bread.
When my tenants put holes in my wall. Little Betty was here with a paint brush and can of spackle.
When my refrigerator broke. Little Betty scolded me when I ordered a new one from Sears.
“I got a guy who knows a guy who can get you a scratched one that is brand new for half the price.”
I quickly learned to let the little property warrior do her job.
I met Little Betty years ago. I was a young home owner and I knew I didn’t want the headaches of home management.
When I built a new house, I rented out my little house because that’s what the pre-crash version of the American Dream said to do.
At the time, all I knew was I want my money. I want my rent. I want to get my tax advantage and create some equity. I don’t want problems.
I have my own job. It takes all day long. I’m tired at the end of the day. After 8 hours of doing what I do, I sure don’t want to break knee caps or fix pipes in the middle of the night. I don’t want police reports or crime tape or excuses.
So I hired Little Betty’s management company to do it.
What I didn’t know was that 2008 was coming. I didn’t know that markets were going to crash and foreclosures were going to sky-rocket and people were going to stand in unemployment lines like it was a full-time job. How could anyone predict a world of no credit and bailouts and banking pirates mass producing loans to anyone with a pulse?
So when the mortgage industry sand castle finally crumbled, many of us homeowners found ourselves suddenly fighting a battle that seemed unwinnable.
“Everything in life is connected to something else,” the sagacious little property manager tells me.
I know exactly what she is saying.
My tenants passed the credit check. She was a doctor. He was a contractor. On paper they were the Brady Bunch. In my house, they were the Manson Family.
For whatever reason, they started to sink, to gurgle, to slowly spin around the drain. Their bills grew and their ability to pay decreased. Rent went from on time to sometime. Suddenly their children were werewolves howling at the moon and breaking walls in my house.
My tenants were acting like crack heads in suburbia.
Suddenly I was the home owner renting to “those people in that house.”
Wow. How did that happen?
When the Manson Family was late on rent, I was forced to get creative with the bank.
“Everything is connected Little Betty says.”
I didn’t want to fix toilets, and I sure didn’t want to default on my loan.
That’s the home owner juggling act that was 2008.
“Remember those crazy renters?” I asked.
“They were nice people,” she said like a grandmother. “They just got caught up in it.”
“You’re 79 Betty. Why you still doing this?”
I hear her pursive inhale.
“I enjoy it,” Little Betty says with resolve. “But there’s always a problem. There’s not a week that someone in the neighborhood isn’t complaining about something. A car is parked on the road. Suddenly a fire truck can’t get through. The neighbors call, they complain to us. They say do something. Move the cars. Call the police. They don’t realize it’s a codes issue. They don’t know that there’s a process for everything.”
Little Betty knows the law. She knows that management company’s don’t own tow trucks to move cars without warrants or permission.
She knows that renters who are behind on rent can’t be evicted without due process.
“And they blame us,” she says.