What Renters Want with Jessica Fiur: Property Management Problems Taylor Swift Should Fix

Is there anything a pop star can’t do?

Taylor Swift recently took on Apple Music, and won. Apparently, Apple was not going to pay its artists for three months, when customers would be in a trial period. So Swift wrote them an open letter, decrying the policy, and asking that artists get paid for their work. Apple agreed, and is changing their policy.

Taylor Swift was right (and woe be it to anyone who disagrees).

Wouldn’t it be great if Taylor Swift could be our property management champion, contacting problem residents or difficult vendors?

Here are some property management issues that we wish Taylor Swift could fix for us:

• When residents don’t pay their rent on time.
• When residents don’t follow the community rules, such as not putting down carpet to muffle noise or not cleaning up after their dogs.
• When residents don’t tell you right away that they’re not renewing, so you’re stuck with a vacancy.
• When residents leave their unit smelling like stale cigarettes and there’s broken appliances and holes in the walls.
• When snow plows don’t come right away so residents are snowed in.
• When the package management system goes down and the technician can’t fix it right away.
• When our daily on-site Taylor Swift concerts just aren’t happening.

Of course, that probably won’t happen. Even if we could get Taylor Swift on retainer, the money for hot pants alone would probably blow the yearly community budget. But, we can learn from this and apply it to our day-to-day lives. For starters, this shows the power of social media. Unless people know about the issue, it will go unresolved. That’s not to say that you should use your social media platforms to call out problem residents, of course. That’s actually, a terrible, horrible, very bad idea. However, it’s a great way to let everyone know about a community-wide problem quickly. And you could also use it to crowd-source answers to the problem. For example, if you usually have a shuttle that takes residents to public transportation, but it’s currently in the shop, you could let residents know. Then, maybe if someone is driving in that direction, they can offer to carpool.

It also shows the importance of standing up for himself. (In this case it’s Taylor Swift’s David taking on Apple’s Goliath. Which seems ridiculous on the surface, because she is a multimillionaire, but it is what it is, I guess.) If you are being taken advantage—a vendor over-charging, a resident that blatantly breaks community rules—don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself. It won’t get fixed unless you take steps to solve it. Keep a paper trail, or digital trail like Taylor Swift, so that you have a record in case you need to refer to it later.

Or you could, just, you know, shake it off.

What do else you think property managers could learn from the Taylor Swift/Apple Music thing?

-Jessica Fiur, Senior Editor