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Landlords that self-manage their rental property regular encounter these three stressful problems, but there are ways to cope and even eliminate them.

3 Problems That Trip Up People Self-Managing Rental Property

No spoiler alert required: life is full of problems. If you are self-managing a rental property – whether it is a house or apartment – you know that you have more problems than most. Here are three common ones and how to eliminate them. 

The best way to deal with all the added stress of managing your own rental home is to acknowledge, understand, and minimize the problems. With that in mind, what follows are what we determined are the three most repeatable problems you might face, with some suggestions for coping with them.

There are two sets of expectations included here: yours, and those of your tenants or residents.  

Let’s start with you. It’s important to understand if you are the kind of person who sets unrealistic expectations for yourself, because the consequences of that can create problems of their own.

Indeed, as this article from Psychology Today points out, there are the “perils of perfectionism.” As the author writes, “The failure to embrace our humanity with its joys, sorrows, and imperfections leads to a rigid sense of self that shatters easily when we miss our goals.”

Being a landlord means that you will make mistakes on occasion. The key is learning from them. So don’t get trapped in cycles of self-punishment or you will actually make it more difficult to succeed next time. You might not have responded fast enough to the knock on the furnace, but it wasn’t because you are a bad person or don’t care about your house or your tenant.

And speaking of tenants, it’s important for your emotional well-being and success as a landlord to establish ground rules from the beginning. Let them know, first of all, that they are living in a house you love, and you are committed to keeping it in tip-top shape for your sake and theirs.

Explain that you will be super-responsive to true emergencies, or situations that require immediate attention. But at the same time, you will need to triage, and that they should appreciate that, too. Most people are reasonable and once you set the ground rules – and make it clear that you are not a professional landlord – problems should sort themselves out.

When things happen unexpectedly in life, they are far more stressful than things we anticipate and can plan for. This also applies to being a landlord.

For example, you may know that you need to replace your furnace - because your plumber told you that it’s time – so you can get estimates and plan for it, without crushing urgency.

However, if your rental property’s furnace decides to give up the ghost in the middle of the winter, and you have to respond immediately – without the luxury of investigating and researching – well, that’s a high-stress moment. In these situations, if you can't respond immediately, you risk the home being classed as uninhabitable and your tenants could withhold rent. 

First, keep things in perspective. Don’t focus on “how disruptive the event is;” instead pause and assess – determine if the situation is as bad as it might seem at first. Then develop a game plan. And of course, work to manage your stress along the way; WebMD has some great advice here.

It happens all the time, sadly, and dealing with it is never an easy emotional journey. But when you are a landlord, relying on multiple people – including your tenant, your contractors, and others in the rental ecosystem – it can happen a great deal.

Perhaps a tenant acted improperly by not respecting your home, but not living up to their side of the bargain. Or perhaps a contractor let you down by not being on time, or delivering shoddy work. It happens and we have to deal with it.

Again, we turn to the experts at Psychology Today. They have some solid advice to share, which includes “allow your feelings.” “Decide if you need to speak up” and “acknowledge your unmet needs.” The latter is deep – is it related to feelings unrelated to the issue at hand? – but worth consideration.

The stress-free alternative to self-managing your rental

These problems are unavoidable when you make the decision to manage your own property, yet completely eliminated if you rent your home with Belong. Belong is the modern property management company that takes on all the major – and minor – pain points of being a landlord. Specific to the challenges raised in this article, Belong establishes and maintains the highest of expectations from both our homeowners and residents, thanks to a unique combination of an end-to-end digital platform, and 24/7 Concierge services. This means that those "out of left field” problems and disappointments can be immediately addressed and solved, and that no one is ever, ever let down.

If you’re interested in learning more about Belong – and how we are transforming the property management business – check out belonghome.com/homeowners.

While innovating and replacing traditional property management services, we have been faced with a dilemma on what to call our services, tenants and landlords.

Belong is Innovating Property Management

Belong is innovating property management — to the point where it breaks every norm and convention of the category. But people like to put even the freshest and most disruptive ideas into boxes. So what should we do?

Belong was started because its founders believed that the world of property management was fundamentally broken. It didn’t serve the people who owned homes, or the people who they rented to. It needed a re-boot.

When you fix something, though — and fix it in a way that it doesn’t resemble what came before – how do you describe that? It’s not as easy as it seems. Do you use the language that people know – even when it’s misleading – or do you invent a new language, and possibly confuse people?

That was Belong’s dilemma. We weren’t the first. As an example of what others faced, Apple still called the iPhone a phone, though it was completely different from what came before it. They didn’t call it an “enhanced intelligent communicator.”

Starbucks positioned itself as a “third place” between home and work, and with its comfy couches that invite you to stay a while, and beautifully designed aesthetics, it is indeed a different world than your traditional coffee shop. But they proudly declare themselves as Starbucks Coffee, even as they demonstrate every day that they’re not what they say they are.

That gives us some comfort.  After all, when people search for “property manager” or “rental agreement” on Google — and millions of people do that every day — they need to find us.  If they weren’t able to, that would make us useless – a cool new idea that no one knows about, understands, or has a framework to put us in.  

What’s more (and to level with you) we face a similar issue with terms like “landlord and “tenant.”  We hate, hate, hate to be associated with them. They are feudal and inherently create an adversary framework.  That’s why we came up with a new Belong vocabulary, where our community is described as consisting of  “Homeowners” and “Renters.” That’s certainly warmer and friendlier language, but again, because people already know what landlords and renters are – probably too well – we hold our noses and use those terms when we need to be super-clear.

But – at the end of the day –  we have enough trust in community to recognize what we are, and how different we are, no matter what we call ourselves.

The happy truth is, when people find us - and then discover what we are able to do for them -  they come to their own conclusions.  They say to themselves things like:

A property manager who guarantees rent? Unheard of!

A property manager who will find people to love my house as much as I do? That’s what I’ve been waiting for!

A property manager that hires and assigns and manages its own contractors? Impossible!

A property manager that gives me sweet digital access to my entire experience? You’ve got to be kidding!

A property manager that does all that? It would be a disservice to call them a property manager!

So there you have it.  Sounds like we need to embrace the language others use, while simultaneously making it clear that dated terminology doesn’t apply. 

It’s a contradiction, but one we will need to live with.

Most Americans are feeling some level of toxic burnout. If you’re not a professional, managing your own property can make it worse.

Is Managing Your Own Property Causing You To Burnout?

We’ve all said it, or heard someone say it:

In fact, it is more than a casual expression, it is a real condition – and a serious one at that.

This definition defines the problem perfectly, we think:

Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet constant demands. 

This situation existed long before the pandemic. As Jill Lepore wrote in the New Yorker in May of this year, “burnout is generally said to date to 1973; at least, that’s around when it got its name. By the nineteen-eighties, everyone was burned out.”

Lepore goes on to add that “To be burned out is to be used up, like a battery so depleted that it can’t be recharged. In people, unlike batteries, it is said to produce the defining symptoms of ‘burnout syndrome’: exhaustion, cynicism, and loss of efficacy.”

And don’t think that burnout chooses one generation over another; its toxic effects cross demographic segments.  In a book called Can’t Even: How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Peterson, the author – a  BuzzFeed News reporter – describes herself as a “pile of embers.” 

There is, of course, no shortage of surveys that track the burnout phenomenon. This particular piece of research – a study called “Burnout Nation – finds that a whopping and nearly unfathomable 76 percent of employees are burned out on their jobs.   Researchers link this to not just the pandemic, but to “major political upheavals and natural disasters ranging from wildfires to hurricanes.”

Add to this a combination of increased work responsibilities and job insecurity, months of homeschool and caregiving duties, and the data speaks for itself.

As you can see, burnout isn’t caused by just one thing. It happens bit-by-bit – accumulates layer-by-layer – as a multitude of tasks and responsibilities that leave no room for thought, reflection, or enjoyment to build up.

As the experts at Healthline put it: “The stress that accompanies each single factor might be manageable on its own, but the combination can easily overwhelm you if you don’t take steps to get support.”

Is managing a rental property adding to your burnout?

If you’re feeling burnout, and are experiencing the symptoms we describe at the beginning of this piece, it's important that you recognize it, and take steps to change it.

One cause could be the results of the decision you’ve made to manage your own rental property – especially if you’re an amateur in this, and doing it on the side. If that’s the case, it’s time to take a good hard look at what self-managing is doing to your overall well-being.

When you look at the causes of burnout, many of them can be linked back to the stresses and pressures of what amounts to 24/7 availability.

It doesn’t matter if you are called upon that often: just the idea that you might be called upon is truly the trigger when it comes to stress, the anticipatory dread that you could get an urgent email or phone call at any moment.

Healthline notes that “It’s tough to make changes when you don’t know exactly what needs to change, but exploring contributing factors or sources of stress in your life can help.”

They go on to point out that “Trying to do too much on your own also creates an ideal environment for burnout to fester.”

At Belong we constantly hear from our homeowners that we have lifted a huge burden from their lives, and helped them deal with the burnout phenomenon.  Whether it’s collecting the rent, finding residents, or managing the inevitable issues that come up all the time, Belong has built the first true 21st-century property management company.

We combine the best of digital and the best of human caring, to dial down the burnout blaze. Learn more about us here.

Poet Sarah T. Jewell wrote a series of haikus for Belong to capture the range of emotions we feel when we have a sense of belonging and safety in a home.

The Poetry of Home: Unexpected Haikus from a Property Manager

Belong believes there are two kinds of domestic bliss: of course there’s the emotional relationship that develops between two people who live together and love each other.  At the same time, there’s the bond that develops between people and the home they live in.

It’s a beautiful thing, the way people respond when they’ve found a place to call home; it inspires a sense of comfort, of joy, even of romance.  A palette of emotions that is maybe best expressed poetically. 

Which is why Belong has commissioned award-winning poet Sarah T. Jewell to write a series of haikus that capture – in the prescribed 5-7-5 syllable count – the range of emotions we feel when we are safe at home. 

The editor-in-chief of Belong’s blog, marketing guru Adam Hanft, was so inspired by Sarah’s work that he was moved to write some haikus of his own.

Feel inspired to write a haiku of your own? Tweet us, or reach out on Facebook!

Adam Hanft

Adam is a futurist - co-author of "Dictionary of the Future" - brand strategist, public-company board member, former comedy-writer (but he hasn't stopped being vaguely amusing), and an investor in Belong.

Ale Resnik

Lucas Hanft

Jane Allison Gunn

Afton Brazzoni

Annalise Mantz

Ale Resnik

Lucas Hanft

Jane Allison Gunn

Afton Brazzoni

Annalise Mantz