Owner Frequently Asked Questions

Bob Huneycutt began his career in real estate in 1993 and began managing rental property part time for some of his former military associates who were being shipped overseas. In 1997 he retired from the United States Air Force and incorporated Tyson Properties Inc. Today we manage over 1,200 homes in the Albuquerque and Rio Rancho metro areas. 

Presently we have five full time licensed property managers, two bookkeepers, two managers, and an administrative staff of five. Tyson Properties also has a sales staff of three licensed sales professionals. To see who we are or to contact one of us, check out Our Staff page! 

Tyson Properties Inc. is centrally located within the Albuquerque Metro area. Property Managers can drive to any location within Albuquerque and Rio Rancho in twenty minutes. Our office is located within one mile of the I-25 and I-40 Interchange, and a short ten minute drive from the Albuquerque airport.

Our address is 922 3rd Street NW, one block South of Mountain Street and two blocks North of Lomas. Our company can be found in the 4000 square foot tan stucco building on the Southeast corner of 3rd Street and Granite Street.

Driving South on Third, you will see our blue signage on the North side of the building. The buildings entrance is on the South side and there is plenty of parking on the South side of the building. Our facility is located three blocks North of Albuquerque's three major downtown court houses. 

For our hours and driving directions, please visit our Hours & Locations page.

No, we do not have our own maintenance staff because we feel it might be seen as a conflict of interest.

We use qualified and licensed contractors, subcontractors, and licensed specialists to conduct all repairs on our properties. These contactors are required to have workman compensation insurance and liability insurance in place before they can work in our rental homes. Many of these contractors have worked with us for over eight years. They value our business and provide us with timely service and very competitive repair rates.

There is no mark-up on the billing amount from these contractors. Tyson Properties bills the owner exactly what the contractor bills us.  

Each time any work is completed on your home, the vendor invoice is copied and posted to your online account. You can log on 24/7 to your online owner account and see copies of any invoice charged against your escrow account.  At the end of the year you can log on and retrieve a compilation of the calendar year's income and expenses, which you can use to prepare your Schedule E for the Internal Revenue Service.

We are very responsive. Our company motto is “Communication is Key” and we get back to phone calls and emails as soon as possible.

First, let's talk about what we do not charge: We do not charge a vacancy fee, placement fee, renewal fee, legal fees, lease-up fees, accounting fees, or maintenance service charge. Some companies will charge a maintenance fee, even if your home is vacant. Sometimes this vacancy fee will be a percentage of the expected rent. Others will charge a placement fee each and every time they place an applicant in your home. In this case, if you keep your rental home for five years, and you place five applicants, those other companies will charge you five placement fees, which can add up quickly. Some companies have a set annual renewal fee.

Other property management companies charge even more fees. Many management companies will charge special fees to post three day notices, seven day notices, or take your tenants to court for non-payment of rent or possible eviction. Another practice is to charge a vacancy fee. This is a fee applied against your home while it is empty and being marketed. It is occasionally a percentage of the anticipated rent or a flat amount. Some firms charge an extra fee each month to provide you with a month end / year end accounting. (This process is a simple by-product of our software and is provided at no charge.) Other companies which have their own maintenance staff will often charge their own house rates to cover materials and labor.

Tyson Properties has no hidden or surprise fees. Any and all charges are listed on our  Management Agreement. Again, it is important to note, at Tyson Properties we only get paid if you get paid.

Our services include managing your home and interacting with your tenant. We answer all inquiries about repairs and schedule all maintenance. We pay bills and manage all accounting needs. We have highly trained, licensed professional property managers who have numerous years of experience in property management. For this skillful management, we charge a flat 11% of the collected rent plus New Mexico Gross Receipts Tax, which is currently 0.7%.

It is important to distinguish this. We only get paid if you get paid. Some firms charge eleven percent of the anticipated rents.

Each month before we mail or direct deposit your rent check, we will deduct from your account any repairs and our brokerage fee.  Your own monthly, personalized statement will reflect all expenses deducted from your trust account each month. 

No, when a repair is made to the home you own, you will receive a separate bill for it.

We feel that extensive advertising is critical and will ultimately help in renting your property. Tyson Properties advertises in eight different online locations. At six of those locations, we do not charge you a fee. It takes about fifteen minutes of our manpower/labor to place ads in each location.

Our internet advertising is the most extensive in the city. We typically always show up on page one of a Google search. In addition, to advertising on our own personal web site, we also advertise with several fee based Internet search engines that specialize in rental properties.

This fee based internet advertising is passed onto the landlord. Our internet advertising cost is $79 for a 30 day period. This is the direct cost for the paid websites that we advertise on. This is standard on all of our properties. 

We pride ourselves in standing apart from our local competitors.  One way we are doing this is by taking Video Tours of our available properties on the market.  We feel that by giving prospective Tenants a video tour they are able to preview the home and learn much more about it than through pictures and/or a video without narration.  Our Property Managers have gone through formal training to learn how to create effective Video Tours.  Creating these videos takes at least two man-hours and a great deal of effort to create, therefore we charge $40/video to create them when a home goes on the market. Please note that these videos will be done by our Property Managers and not by a professional videographer. 

Please read our “Eviction Protection Guarantee” (paragraph 22 in our Management Agreement). This paragraph describes our eviction policy and subsequent fees in detail. Briefly, you will pay $4/month, every month into a legal ops fund. In the event of an eviction, we will pay your court filing fees from this fund and will go to court on your behalf.

Yes, when you hire us you have given us the job of interacting with your tenant, scheduling maintenance, and taking care of your property. We require a $400 maintenance deposit into your trust account. This $400 balance will stay in your account and will always be available for emergency repairs or small incidentals as they arise. If this amount becomes depleted, it will be replenished from your rent income and documented on your monthly owner's statement.

When your tenant vacates the property, we will raise your escrow by an additional $400 to cover any needed repairs to turnover the home and get it ready to put back on the rental market.  Once the home re-rents, your escrow will be returned back to $400.00 and any excess balance will be sent back to you with the first rent disbursement.

Yes, there is a trip charge of $75 if an employee has to meet an appraiser. Usually your tenant will be willing to meet with an appraiser and you can avoid this charge.

Tyson Properties is open five days a week to deal with any emergencies that may arise with a property. We do not have an emergency line available 24/7.

Please read our compensation termination paragraphs in our management agreement for full details about terminating your contract. You must give us a 30-day notice when terminating your contract with Tyson.

Please note, if you cancel with us prior to us obtaining a tenant, there is a termination fee of $250 that will apply (see paragraph 8 of the Management Agreement). If you terminate the contract while a tenant with an existing lease is in the home, a termination fee of ½ of our remaining commissions is due.

Tyson Properties requires a 30-day notice to cancel the management contract. We will provide you a full accounting of your funds within 60 days of the end date of your management contract.

Yes, every year.

Tyson Properties sends out checks for owners between the 10th and 20th of each month, after rent (which is due on the first of the month) has been paid and processed. Disbursements are sent out on the Monday, Wednesday or Friday seven days after the tenant has paid rent in order to allow proper time for funds to clear the bank. If rent is not paid on or before the third, a late fee is assessed and then processed. After the first of the month, you can log onto your online statement at any time and go to the Activity tab and see if your tenant has paid rent, then count out seven days to determine when to expect your disbursement. Your monthly statement will be uploaded on the 1st day of the month for the previous month, along with invoices for any costs incurred, which can be found under the Documents tab. We recommend paying your mortgage one month in advance so a delay in your tenant's rent due to a holiday, weekend or non-payment will not cause you to be late on your mortgage payment.

Yes, we do. We provide an itemized statement every month, which is accessible through your online account. You can also find daily activity and copies of all invoices through your online account as well.

We do not have a sample. However, each monthly statement will show a line item for each income item and expense charged on your account.

When a property is in good condition it attracts the best quality tenants, can rent for a higher amount, and will typically rent more quickly than if it is in fair or poor condition.

In general the home should meet the following requirements before posting a rental listing:

• The house should be clean, walls should be painted (we recommend neutral colors), carpet should be commercially cleaned.
• Blinds are required on all clear windows throughout the house.
• All appliances and features should be in good repair, and we recommend that, if at all possible, refrigerator, washer, and dryer should be provided.

The lawn should be kept trim and neat if there is grass, and should be watered.
Upon taking up management responsibilities for your home, we will conduct a walk-through and inspect the condition of the property so that we can suggest anything that might be done to improve the condition of the property and make it more appealing to potential tenants. 

If tenants don't see your property, they won't know that it is available - so we make sure that they do!
 
Tyson Properties Inc. will place red, white and blue yard signs in the yard of your rental home. Almost 20% of potential tenant inquires come from these yard signs.
 
Our advertising does not stop there. We are also very active and aggressive in our internet marketing as shown by this website. In today's competitive market, we find many of our renters are more comfortable with computers than newspapers and we actively cater to that segment. Tyson Properties networks with several different web sources and that helps keep us at the top of the search engines.
 
We advertise through our own website and on many national websites such as rentbits.com, freerentalsite.com, ahrn.com (a respected military website), craigslist.com, Realtor.com and the MLS (Multiple Listing Service). In addition, these websites may feed out to multiple other “sister” websites, too, including Zillow and Trulia.
 
Naturally, we also market to local government, corporations, and relocation departments. View our current rental inventory on our Homes for Rent page.

You can specify whether or not the tenant is allowed to have a pet but you may not discriminate against any protected class under the Federal Fair Housing Act or local housing laws, such as limiting family size (beyond the fire safety limits imposed) or not allowing single tenants. Because of this, it is best if the selection process is left to Tyson Properties. We have guidelines and run background, credit, and criminal checks to ensure a responsible tenant is placed in your property.

Yes, there is a criminal as well as a background check conducted during the application process on all adult applicants. Tyson Properties extensive criminal background check searches the databases of 50 states and some governmental agencies. Other local management companies limit their criminal search to New Mexico only, but we feel it is necessary to search nationwide.  

The criminal check is an additional cost to Tyson Properties.  Therefore, on all approved applicants only, the Home Owner will pay a $30 fee per approved adult for the criminal check.  Tyson Properties absorbs the cost of the criminal check for all denied applicants.

Due to Fair Housing restrictions, we do not involve our Owners in our screening process. Tyson Properties, Inc. makes the sole decision based on the Tenant’s qualification under our guidelines.

We use a point system to determine if a tenant is qualified to rent a home. Our process includes thorough credit screening, background checks, criminal history checks, income verification and rental history verification.

Due to Fair Housing restrictions, we do not involve our Owners in our screening process. Tyson Properties, Inc. makes the sole decision based on the Tenant’s qualification under our guidelines. We use a point system to determine if a tenant is qualified to rent a home. Our process includes thorough credit screening, background checks, criminal history checks, income verification and rental history verification.

We show properties by checking out keys to the prospective tenants. They come to our office, complete a form and we make a copy of their driver’s license and verify a second form of id. They then leave a $25 cash deposit and must return with the key in 24 hours.

No, as the owner of your property it is your decision whether to allow pets or not. Some landlords will unequivocally not allow a pet; others will approve only small dogs, while others will accept a dog of any size. Some landlords will allow only one pet and others will allow multiple pets. Some homeowners will allow cats, some will not, and others will allow cats only if they have been de-clawed and spayed or neutered. If you decide to allow pets, Tyson Properties charges the tenant a $100 non-refundable pet fee per animal living in the home and an additional $25 per month pet fee per pet. If you decide not to allow pets within your home we would like you to be aware that you will be eliminating almost 62 percent of the rental market and it could be substantially more difficult to rent your home.

Yes. Tenants can sign-up and pay online through a website called PayLease.com.

As per our policy, rent is late on the third day of the month. If the rent is not received by midnight on the third day of the month, our firm will post a three day notice. If a tenant fails to pay rent within the allotted amount of time set by law, a court order will be sent to them and the eviction process will begin.

Tyson Properties management style is very proactive. We identify late paying tenants early and take aggressive legal action so that our owners do not lose money. Tyson Properties policy is to only allow a tenant to be filed upon in the courts one time. Upon the first court filing, the tenant has to pay all monies owed in full, including any outstanding utilities.

In subsequent months, if a tenant is late and has to be filed upon a second time, Tyson Properties will seek a judgment/eviction even if the tenant offers to satisfy the unpaid rent and then Tyson Properties will take the necessary steps to terminate the lease.

Our policy regarding spraying for insects is that the owner will provide one spray, thereafter it’s the tenant obligation unless there is an infestation or point of access that needs to be addressed.

Applicants must put all gas, electricity, water, and trash into their names before keys will be given at lease signing.

If your home is located in the City of Albuquerque, the water company will not put the water bill in your tenant’s name. The water bill is always sent to the physical home address. If your home is located in Albuquerque,  please make sure the water bill is being mailed directly to the property address, Attention Current Resident.  We will sign up to receive an electronic copy of the water bill to monitor the payments.  In the event that the Tenant is not paying the bill and the amount due exceeds $200, we will take further action to collect the past due amount.

If the rental home is located in Rio Rancho, the tenant will be charged $170 for one year's refuse at lease signing. At lease renewal time another $170 will be charged. Visit our Owner Forms & Services page for more detailed information on the utility procedures.

You do not want your personal mail to be delivered to your rental home. The potential for losing important papers and the cost to avoid high postage is a big incentive to get your mail routed to your personal home address.

One of the first things you need to do is notify the United States Postal Service of your change of address. You do not want your builder’s mail or your closing papers going to the tenant’s address.

To do this simply go to USPS.com, click on the second row of banners that go across the page left to right. Select the blue banner labeled “Receiving Mail” with a subtitle of “change of address” and then just follow the prompts.