The Real Importance of Hiring a Property Manager
Being a real estate investor is a road full of excitement and joy. However, at a certain part of your journey, it may seem like you don't have enough time to manage all your properties. That’s where hiring property managers/ property management company comes in place!
What may be the actual benefits of hiring a property manager, and when should you consider hiring one?
Let’s get down to it!
Your time is expensive
When you first start your real estate career, everything is exciting, and you have a plethora of time to work on everything since you probably own only a handful of properties.
As stated, once you progress and become more and more successful, you'll start looking at your time differently. At the end of the day, it's much more vital for you to plan future acquisitions rather than deal with late payments from tenants or interviewing a potential one. Hiring a property manager is an excellent way of buying time and outsourcing unnecessary busywork. This is what most people think property management companies are about, and they are right in a way. But what they tend to overlook are the other advantages of it which are as important.
Here’s how a property management company can help you:
1. Property managers are aware of the law
Now, for the beginning, there are many qualities a professional property manager should possess, such as evaluating important metrics, which we’ll be talking about later on. One of these qualities is also knowing the law.
We believe that one of the biggest advantages of hiring a property manager is the ability to avoid any legal hassle since it usually tends to get really expensive. With rich knowledge of state and federal laws, your property manager will know what to do in any situation and will ensure you‘re doing everything legally and according to the latest regulations.
2. Knowing contractors and suppliers
Property management obviously isn't just about finding and interviewing tenants. Once something at one of your properties goes wrong, it, again, can be time-consuming if you have to repair or even make a reconstruction of your property.
On the other hand, the property manager has all the contacts to all contractors and suppliers, which, ultimately, speeds up and eases the entire process of repair or reconstruction.
3. Keeping relationships with tenants on a professional level
Renting out your property is a business. We’re not saying that it’s necessarily wrong to get personal with tenants, but on the other hand, it's much better to have somebody as a middleman between you and your tenant to keep the relationship strictly professional. This eases the possible eviction process later on if the tenant turns out to be a bad choice.
4. Marketing services for your property
Let’s say one of your properties is vacant. How do you find tenants? How do you evaluate which tenants could be the best for the property? The great thing about property managers is that they access large networks of people where they can find tenants in a matter of hours and have the skills to precisely evaluate whether a particular person is the right choice to become your tenant.
5. Routine inspections
One of the tasks of a property manager is to regularly check the current state of your properties during move-in and move-outs to prevent any future conflicts with your tenants. And if there occur any possible conflicts, you don't have to be the one handling them and being the "bad guy".
6. Flexibility of your investments
If you're like most landlords, you probably own properties near the area where you live, and there is nothing wrong with it.
However, it could be a bit limiting since you're usually tied to a specific city or region.
With the use of a property management company, you can invest anywhere, no matter how far it is from your home, which could be an advantage since every state has its own economy, thus you'll be able to seize all the opportunities there are available in any real estate market.
7. Handling the urgent 3 AM calls
Another fantastic advantage of hiring a property manager is that you’re giving away your responsibility in a way. Of course, the properties are still yours and ultimately your responsibility, but when it comes to the daily tasks, such as previously mentioned inspections or handling urgent night calls when something goes wrong, you're not the one in charge, which is something many landlords find very attractive and comfortable.
8. Understanding key metrics and knowing how to take action on them
This one is pretty self-explanatory. A professional property manager should be able to look at metrics and fully understand them, and know what action steps to take.
Some of the key metrics we at Bottom Line Property Management pay attention to the most are delinquency rate, length of lease terms, total occupancy, renewal rate, open work orders, percentage of units in turn, and total days in turn.
Conclusion
If you're interested in getting to know more about property management, feel free to check our website or contact us. We will be happy to answer all your questions and hopefully help you manage your properties.
