Nothing worse than it being -35C, its just after Christmas, approaching January 1^st and you still have no renter.  You’ve heard, or seen the hard way that if you have a vacancy come January, you’ll probably have it until March 1st…not many moving here or moving places in January.  The dread sets in.  You can almost feel the dollars floating out of your bank account.

Then you get a phone call  “Hi, I’d like to take the place you have for rent”.  A feeling of overwhelming relief….but should it be?  The toughest part of in house or self managing is that the ups and downs of being an investor, are yours and yours only.  No property manager to take the emotional ups and downs for you and tell you about them once they are all better,  just all you, riding the rollercoaster, butterflies and all.  If you are going to be in the game long term, the 10% or so that you pay to a Property Manager are well worth it for this one aspect only, nevermind the many other benefits they can bring. 

When we are in an emotional situation (certainly paying money to a mortgage that we didn’t count on paying out of pocket), we are NOT in a position to be making decisions.  So don’t.  Your opinion can not be trusted, your gut feeling is probably tainted,  you  are in what would be considered a conflict of interest and therefore, should bow out of the decision making.  So if you don’t have a manager to help, you’d better have some rules in place to keep you from making emotional and thus bad decisions.  Set your own rules, before you hit those times, so that when you do, you’re set.  It may be a credit score.  Say 630 is the very minimum you will take for a low end place and 680 for a higher end place. Maybe its that they have to give you a criminal record check and it must be 100% clean.  Maybe its that they have to have lived in their current place for at least 2 years and worked at the same place for at least two years or have a VERY good reason why not (moved to Alberta for work).  It could be a combination of all of these as is the case in our office.  By putting these ‘rules’ in place, you take the emotions out and it becomes a formula again.  THE DECISION IS MADE FOR US, NOT BY US. In times of high emotion, this is invaluable.   REIN^TM talks very much about taking emotions out of investing and we often think of it when we are purchasing a property, but it doesn’t stop with the purchasing.  It must continue throughout the complete cycle of investing. 

 So most of us that are investors are not ‘live by the rules’ kind of people, otherwise, we probably wouldn’t be investing, so self discipline is essential.  MAKE it unemotional.  Do not give in to temptation to let your gut instinct make the decision.