Managing a Spokane Rental From Out of State: A Practical Guide for Remote Owners
Most people who own a Spokane rental and living somewhere else didn't plan on it. We call those “accidental landlords.” As of this writing, approximately 50% of our owner inquiries for property management services are from owner occupied clients that cannot sell their home at a favorable price. They took a job in Denver or they want to live closer to their grandchildren and relocating is the solution.
Six months in, they're finding a plumber from four states away at nine at night and getting calls from neighbors complaining about the neglected lawncare.
This is a guide to what actually breaks when you own here and live elsewhere, and what you can reasonably do about it.
Keeping Up with Legal Changes to the Landlord Tenant Laws
Washington law requires an out-of-state owner to designate a person residing in the county who is authorized to accept service of notices and legal process on the owner's behalf. That's in RCW 59.18.060, alongside the requirement to give the tenant the name and address of the landlord, either in the rental agreement or posted conspicuously at the property.
If you don't designate anyone, the statute picks for you: whoever the rent is paid to becomes your agent by default. That may be a relative doing you a favor, and they may have no idea they've been made your legal contact.
There's a second piece. An out of state owner who violates the Residential Landlord Tenant Act is deemed to have submitted to the jurisdiction of Washington courts, and can be personally served where they live. Living in Arizona doesn't put distance between you and a Spokane County judge.
None of this makes remote ownership unlawful. It just means the informal version, where a cousin collects the rent, nobody's designated anything, and the tenant has your cell number and that's the whole system, doesn't meet the standard.
The 24-hour clock
Washington sets repair deadlines that run from the moment the tenant gives you written notice.
24 hours for a hazardous condition, or no hot water, cold water, heat, or electricity. 72 hours for a refrigerator, range, oven, or major plumbing fixture you supplied. Ten days for most other repairs.
24 hours is the one that matters. In January in Spokane, a furnace failure is not a maintenance ticket, it's a habitability emergency with a legal clock on it and a real risk of frozen pipes behind it. You cannot meet that deadline from Dallas by calling around for someone who answers.
What you need is not a phone number. It's a standing relationship with an HVAC contractor who will prioritize your call because you've used them before, and someone who can physically get into the property to let them in and confirm the work happened.
Which is the actual problem with remote ownership. It's not that you can't make decisions from far away. It's that you can't be in the building.
What genuinely cannot be done remotely
Being honest about this list is more useful than pretending technology has solved it.
Emergency response. Covered above. Water damage in particular gets exponentially worse per hour.
Showings. Self showing lockboxes exist and they work reasonably well, but you're handing access to an unoccupied property to unverified people, and in a market with 7.3% vacancy you're competing against listings where someone walks the prospect through and answers questions in person. Vacancy costs more than showing costs. You are inviting squatters into your home without a secured way to provide a potential tenant access to the property and a system to inspect the unit post showing to ensure doors are locked and lights are off.
Inspections. A tenant sending you photos is not an inspection. You need someone in the property periodically who knows what a slow leak under a sink looks like before it becomes a subfloor replacement. Hiring someone to handle the move in and move out reports would be highly recommended since a landlord loses all leverage if there is a security deposit dispute at move out.
Court. If you file an unlawful detainer, someone is appearing in Spokane County Superior Court. Notices must be served properly, and Washington requires an attempt at personal service first, then posting and mailing if that fails. Defective service kills the case.
Contractor oversight. The distance between the contractor says it's done and it's done is where remote owners lose the most money. Nobody sends a bad invoice to a client who inspects the work.
Vetting people from a distance
If you're going to self manage remotely, this is the part to invest in.
Get three quotes on the first significant job, not because you want the cheapest but because you want to see who explains their reasoning. Ask for a Washington contractor registration number and verify it with Labor and Industries, which takes two minutes online and tells you whether they're bonded and insured. Pay by card or check, never cash, so you have a record for both taxes and disputes. And require photos before and after, every time, until they've earned the benefit of the doubt.
Be aware that Spokane trades are busy and a lot of them won't take on a one off small job for an owner they've never met. This gets easier with volume, which is precisely what a remote owner with one house doesn't have.
How to evaluate a manager when you can't drop in
The usual advice is to read reviews and compare fee structures. Fee structures matter less than people think. A point of difference in the management fee is small next to one avoidable vacancy or one botched deposit return.
Better questions:
- What happens at 2am on a Sunday in January? You want a specific answer involving a specific person, not, we have an emergency line.
- How often is someone physically inside the property, and do I get the report? Ask to see a sample report. If it's three photos and a sentence, keep looking.
- How do you handle the move in condition checklist? In Washington, if there's no checklist signed by both parties, no deposit deduction for damage is enforceable. A manager who's vague about this is telling you something.
- What's your average days on market, and how does that compare to the county?
- Do you mark up maintenance? Some do, some don't. Either is defensible. Not being told is not.
- Can I see an owner statement? You'll be reading these monthly for years. If you can't follow one, that's a real cost.
Then call two owners they manage for. Not the references on the website. Ask for owners with properties like yours who've been with them more than two years.
When you don't need a manager
We're a management company, so weigh this accordingly, but a few situations genuinely don't call for one.
If you have a family member locally who is competent, willing, and actually available, and you own one property with a long term tenant who's been there years, you can probably run it yourself. Plenty of people do. Designate that person properly, keep the paperwork right, and set money aside for the year the furnace goes.
That arrangement tends to fail in two ways. The family member's patience runs out somewhere around the second midnight call, or the tenant leaves and suddenly the job is a full turnover rather than forwarding a rent check. Have a plan for both before you need one.
The realistic version
Owning a rental in Spokane from somewhere else is entirely workable. It's just that the parts requiring physical presence don't shrink because you moved. They get delegated to someone, formally or informally, and the informal version is where the risk sits.
If you're going to hand it to somebody, hand it to somebody whose name is on the designation.
