Protect Your Personal Number;

One small choice can wreck your boundaries as a landlord: sharing your personal cell phone number with tenants. I learned that lesson the loud way, from late-night texts during a brief neighborhood power outage to nonstop calls and vulgar voicemails when an AC repair didn’t go perfectly in Texas heat. When residents can reach you directly, you don’t just get “updates” you become the default emergency line for problems you can’t control, and it trains people to bypass your process. 

I break down why this is one of the most expensive property management mistakes you can make, especially if you’re scaling a real estate portfolio across multiple doors or mobile home parks. We talk through the practical fixes that restore sanity fast: using property management software like AppFolio, setting clear expectations in the lease agreement, pushing maintenance requests through the resident portal, and using a dedicated business line instead of your real number. I also share how I protect my identity as an owner so tenants don’t hunt me down on social media when they want to escalate. 

Just as important, we dig into documentation. Texts, emails, portal tickets, and written timelines can be the difference between a messy accusation and a clean “case closed” when a tenant involves the city or an inspector. If you want fewer emergencies, fewer escalations, and a more professional rental operation, this is your playbook for systems, boundaries, and scalable communication. 

Subscribe to the Property Profits Podcast, share this with a landlord friend, and leave a review so more owners can avoid this mistake. What boundary or system has saved you the most headaches?

Transcript

The Biggest Owner Communication Mistake;

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right. So today I want to talk about the worst mistake I made at property management. All right. So I own a lot of property, multiple doors. Anyways, biggest mistake I've made with these mobile home parks is there's like three of them that the whenever, you know, I use my personal cell phone to like reach out to tenants at some time or the other. And just because like I'm a doer, right? Like I want stuff done. Say something was going wrong, like, or even, I mean, on this 88-unit park, when we bought it, it was like a weekend the next day after we bought it. So instead of like having the team upload everything in the CRM app folio, get it all. It's like, you know what? I'm just gonna call and text every tenant individually today. I spent my day doing that, introducing myself, which is good and I like doing. And I went in person and did it too, but I shouldn't have done it with my personal number. So

Midnight Outage Calls And Texts;

SPEAKER_00 1:00

get this. Like last night at like 11 o'clock, there's a power outage in the whole neighborhood, including include not my neighborhood, but the park, this park island. And like there's just a power outage in the whole neighborhood, including the park. I get all these calls and texts at 11 o'clock last night. Y'all, the power was out for like 15 minutes. Like, what am I gonna do about a power outage? But I got all these voicemails about how it's hot and people are hot and this isn't right, all this stuff to my personal cell phone, right? For one, that's crazy that people, that's just how people act. But for two, like my personal cell phone, like compromised, right? So, you know, like whenever you buy property, and it might sound common sense to you, but you know, like I said, I'm a doer. So like I've I've intervened, handled situations where there was like disgruntled tenants. I might have called them from my personal cell real quick, instead of just logging into the CRM and giving them a call, right? Or like instead in App Folio, you can send group like mass messages. App Folio is a property management software that we use instead of sending messages through even there or whatever. Um, just don't use your personal cell phone number, right? And on your lease agreements, or this is just my experience. I'm not saying don't, you do you, but I'm telling you, this is where the things that I wish I wouldn't have done, and I'm not going to do moving forward. It's just, you know, you live and learn, and sometimes you have to learn a few times to learn a lesson.

The AC Meltdown And Escalation;

SPEAKER_00 2:35

And finally, I'm done doing that. I'm done having people have my personal number. Like, get this, like yesterday, this dude, his AC goes out like a week ago at like a cabin that that I own. And my I have a you know, I've teamed. Well, they sent the AC company out, took them a couple days to get there. Unfortunately, it's hot in Texas, too. And I guess the AC company didn't fix it right, fix it, whatever. They went, but it's not fixed. Well, I get a call, like literally, I'm not exaggerating, 20 back-to-back calls from this guy on my personal cell phone, the tenant, yesterday, and then he left me so many vulgar messages, and I just responded with, please respond to my team that has been trying to reach out to you. Do not call me. Everything needs to be directed towards the office and towards the team that is trying to get a hold of you to resolve this situation because he won't answer their calls, he won't answer the text, he wants to speak with the owner, right? And that's not how it goes, you know. But if I never, if he never had my cell phone number, then he'd never have that opportunity. And get this. So I get a I have a handyman that used to live at that park for years. And he says, Hey, my buddy that lives in my old unit got a knock on the door yesterday afternoon or banging at the door, and that dude that rents the cabin down the road, he was like looking for either me or you. I don't know, but he was pissed. And he said he needed his AC fixed right now, just acting erratic, right? I mean, people get crazy. I understand, like, it sucks if it gets hot. I don't know anybody, including myself, where an AC hasn't gone out, or there was something clogged in pipes or plumbing went out, or water went out, right? Like, but some people just aren't emotionally regulated enough to be professional or to be like humans, right? So, anyways,

Set Boundaries And Protect Your Identity;

SPEAKER_00 4:45

I say like I like to protect myself these days because like I said, in the past I've just screwed up, like giving my personal info out. I don't even like for people to know like I I'm the owner of the park, even though it's kind of avoid like it's unavoidable, really. I just say I'm one of the owners now. Like if I even own it solely, I'm one of the owners, part of management. You know, it depends who I'm talking to. If I'm talking to like a tenant, it's like I'm part of management. But if it's like utility services, obviously I'll tell them I'm one of the owners. But people like will look me up on Facebook and follow me and DM me when there's like uh property management issues, right? Because, you know, if if they find out I'm the owner. So I just really kind of protect that now, you know. And we have like a portal in our in our uh rental software where you're supposed to upload any issues. And then it hits my team member, and my team members dispatch somebody on our vendors list, right? That's how the process works. Because if not, like we try to explain to them, which I I don't even like, I'd still tell them, hey, it's not gonna get done if you send me a message. Like I'm not the person that does this, you know, like it's gonna be like, oh yeah, if I did it, it'd be like, okay, and then I'd be doing something else, it'd be done. But we have a process, we have systems. So like I explain to them if you actually follow the systems that are in place, you'll get what you need done. And not only that, on our lease agreements, rent-to-own agreements, whatever, well, mainly lease agreements, because we don't really do repairs on rent to own unless it's the land that the units are sitting on. Lease agreements, it says, you know, what number to call, what to do, you know, if you have any issues, concerns, where to pay, all the stuff, right? It says it on there. And we go over the lease and we tell them these things, but some people just panic, right? They just panic. And I just want you to understand that's part of the business. However, what I've also learned

Document Everything For Disputes;

SPEAKER_00 6:55

is document everything. All right, everything. That's why I really like text messages, emails, um, over phone calls. I know a lot of people's first reactions, I want to get on the phone with somebody, but I like to have everything documented. If it's in text or email, it's like, hey, this and this happened, this and this happened, and I train my team that way. And I'm like, hey, everything documented. Like I talked to my team member yesterday. I was like, hey, we have this crazy ass guy knocking on people's doors, like, you know, leaving me vulgar messages. Don't, don't talk to him over the phone, you know, and if you can avoid it, you know, try to text him first. That way we have all this stuff in writing. Like I have all of his voicemails transcripted, right? And the reason I say that is we do property management, and like I've had a tenant call the city before and be like, hey, they're not doing what we asked them to do, you know, and it's like, well, the city inspector like called and or emailed us, and they're like, hey, we opened a case, you know, this has only happened once, but la, well, my assistant, one of my assistants, one of my team members, was like, well, man, it sucks to happen, but here's all of our documentation. And he just hands like a scroll of all the stuff we've done, text, calls, responding, all the stuff, right? And then the city is like, Well, damn, okay, well, thank you. Like, case closed, right? So if that wasn't documented, we could look a little different in their eyes. But instead, they're appreciative and they're like, okay. They don't say this, but like, okay, well, the tenants are just being, you know, whatever. It's part of the business, right? And and you're gonna have unruly

Build Systems To Scale Safely;

SPEAKER_00 8:45

people every now and then, but just just don't let people have your personal info. Even and and maybe you're just like a single family landlord. Um, still, you can use a CRM, you can use a Google number, you can set the tone, set the precedence. I guess that's my some of my biggest advice, you know, um, especially like scaling. I mean, most most landlords that I know wanna want to scale. Maybe I mean they all want to make more money, right? And to do that, you usually have to have more properties or be more efficient at what you're doing. But either one requires systems and processes. And in order to have systems and processes, like direct-to-direct communication isn't always the best. So I hope this helps. And uh maybe you'll chuckle out of it with me getting uh a couple crazy calls, calls last night whenever a damn neighborhood ran out of electric. But it is what it is. You know, I'm I'm uh I learned my lessons too, and that's why we continue to build our processes and continue to upgrade and continue to level up. We're all we're all here learning, right? No matter what level you're at, I'm at, whatever, we're all learning, we're all evolving. That's probably why you're listening to this podcast. If you

Closing Advice And Listener Requests

SPEAKER_00 10:05

are. So thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed this, refer to a friend, family member, deeply appreciate it. My name's Travis Wells. This is the Property Profits Podcast. Go follow me on socials. If you uh got any questions, comments, concerns, likes, dislikes, put them in whatever comments you're watching this on, listening to this on. And it takes uh it's a little pain in the ass to uh go leave a review, but if you can, I I'd really appreciate it. It'll help the algorithm uh send this out to more people. And if it helped you, maybe it'll help another person. Till next time, we'll see you then.