Monday, September 12, 2011

The Spy Among Us

I work in property management. For the most part, Home Office leaves us alone, as long as things are going well. Sadly, things haven't been going well for a little while now. We have several vacancies and while there are only a handful of them, they spell doom and gloom for us in the office.

Our National, an interesting little man, sent us two travelers. These travelers are "trained" individuals whose job is to get us leased up. Which I thought was my job...

And it isn't that I haven't had leases, because I have. The problem is two fold: One, some of my leases fell through because they had criminal activity and we are very strict. The second reason is that we are a tax credit property which means the applicant cannot make over a specific amount. Meaning, that some of the other leases I lost were due to the applicant being over-income.

Throw into the mix that the property is also a 55+ and you have so many ways to fail that it's amazing.

The first traveler they sent us wasn't trained. There were so many thing that she didn't know that it was astounding. That and she was always texting or on her phone. She made herself right at home the very first morning by planting her fanny in the bosses chair.

Wow.

My boss shipped her off to the other property so that I could continue to work on the projects I had lined up.

Traveler number two arrived in all her blond glory. She's cute. She's smart. She's so young I could have given birth to her. And we like her! She's a hard worker and she's got great ideas.

Except...

She told my boss out right that she's here to find out what the problem is.

So, I decided to show her. We put together an open house for Saturday. We advertised. We had danishes & coffee. We put out the signs. Then we waited.

Not. One. Visitor.

Cuties and I discussed the problems with tax credit properties and 55+. On the one had we keep the rent low because of the tax credit. On the other we are looking for low income seniors. The two don't always match up.

I think Cutie is getting the idea. She see our frustration and is beginning to understand the problems we are up against.

Now, as long as she isn't interested in taking either of our jobs...we may be okay.

Anyone got a Tums?

1 comment:

Island Rider said...

Everything okay? I've missed your blog posts.