Before deciding to self-manage or get the help of a property manager, you need to know what goes into managing a rental property. A beginner investor sees rental property as rental income minus the mortgage and expenses equal to profit.
While the formula is the basic mantra for a lot of investors, you also need to include energy and landlord duties into that equation. Investors can choose whether to hire a competent property management expert to handle real estate duties or they can manage the rental properties themselves. Fortunately, a lot of these investors found success in self-managing the rental properties to cut the management costs.
To decide whether to hire an expert or manage it themselves, let us take a look at all the duties the landlord has to make if you will oversee real estate properties or if you want to hire experts including the time required and the financial expenses.
Maintenance
Possessing a rental property will involve a lot of managing routines as well as emergency maintenance. People renting a home are very notorious when it comes to wear and tear of the house than the real owners, so rental properties require a lot of energy from the managers and owners to upkeep.
Rental property experts should schedule regular maintenance to keep the furniture and appliances operational, check getters if they are overflowing or respond whenever your tenants need your help. Proper maintenance administration will improve the bottom line exponentially.
Addressing Vacancies
When the real estate is vacant, or the opening is looming, you should make sure that the next tenant is already lined up. Finding the right tenant will involve more than just putting your property on Craigslist. Do not forget you need to do property visits, talking with the prospective tenants, as well as meeting them for site visits.
You need to do rental application collection, screen the prospective tenants, and approve them. Not only that, you need to prioritize the screening of the next tenant. A good investment relies heavily on how good your tenant screening is.
As part of the process, you need to look at the applicant’s eviction history, credit report, and criminal history, if there’s any. You also need to verify their income references as well as past landlords. Your investment will give you a positive result when it comes to eviction-free rent situations.
Tenant Relations
A good rental manager will check with the occupants of the rental property, at least once every three months. This visit can be about seasonal maintenance or check whether everything in the rented place is working well. If the occupant has any issues, you need to make sure that the situation will be appropriately addressed and effectively.
Sometimes, the occupant will contact you with a real complaint. Other times, the occupant will call you for something like, “noisy dogs across the streets,” problems that they should handle but too lazy to act on it. Regardless of the situation, you will be the contact point of the occupant of your rental property, whether it is good or bad.
Rent Collection
Collection of rent should be accessible. Ask the occupant to send you the check by mail every first day of the month, so you can deposit it in your account. But what if there’s a problem with the delivery, and you don’t receive the check. That will be the time to call your tenant, listen to every excuse they will tell you, and wait for another time to get the money.
What if the occupant will tell you lies about your money being in the mail already? What if the courier delivered the check to a different address, and your tenant happens to be on vacation too far away, that they can’t send you a new one? All the scenarios that will go with collecting rent can be managed using online payment software. But if the occupant of your rental property misses their payment, you will still need to find out what happened.
(Want to know the most popular online payment software in the market today?)
Conclusion
Buying rental properties are an excellent way to diversify and build equity in your portfolio when you are choosing whether you want to invest your time managing the rental property yourself or ask the help of rental property experts and pass the duties of maintaining your investment to them. You need to make a decision that will benefit you, your rental business as well as your lifestyle.
