About a Tree

My name is Adam Compton. I'm the Operations Manager at Omyra, and today, I want to tell you a small story about a tree. This story probably started about 30 years ago when the tree was just a seed, but that's not where I'm going with this. My experience with this tree started just this week.

I recently came back to Omyra after trying my hand at corporate consulting and then installing and repairing air conditioning equipment. Having first-hand experience as a home services contractor, my natural role in property management is deciphering maintenance requests, troubleshooting with tenants, arranging the repair jobs, and managing the contractors that we trust to perform them.

When a maintenance request is submitted by one of our residents, its first stop is my desk. On this particular day, I got a picture of a 40 foot tall tree leaning at a dangerous angle. It came to rest on the branch of an even taller tree. From the pictures, it's clear... if this falls, it's going to come down directly onto the roof of a house we manage. Not good.

My first step was to call the resident... no answer. Shoot.

In the request, he said that it was okay for me to come onto the property. I've never been to this house before, but I do have GPS, so into my sedan I went and zipped over to Decatur. After carefully parking out of the danger zone, I hopped out and got a good look at the situation. If the tree shifted and the branch that was holding it up broke, it was going to be a nightmare for us, the residents, our client, and the neighbor whose yard the tree was growing from.

In Georgia, a tree falling is an act of nature and it becomes the responsibility of the homeowner that owns the property where it lands. There is language surrounding negligence, but ideally we don't want to have to prove anything in court or fight with insurance. We just want the problem to be resolved and not cost our client an arm and a leg, or our resident an actual arm or a leg.

I grabbed a few pictures and a quick walk around video. Wanna know what I did next? Hint: I didn't look up who owns the house and find their email address or send a certified letter.

I ran my fingers through my messy, wind blown hair and did something that is becoming a lost art... I knocked on the neighbor's door and had a conversation with a stranger.

Turns out, the neighbor is a sweetheart. She didn't even know the tree had fallen over. Her driveway is on the opposite side of the house from the tree and she enters through the front door. We had a pleasant chat, took a look at the tree together, and I gave her a recommendation for a tree removal company that we have a good relationship with. No strong-arming, no legal threats, just two people talking about a mutual problem.

She called a few companies, had the tree secured to keep it from falling over, and then removed entirely. End result? No tree crashing through the property. Happy (and safe!!) tenants, a thankful neighbor, and protection for my client's property and finances.

Not too shabby. Just another example of what good property management looks like!

PS- I didn't even have to bother the owners. From their perspective, it's just magic.