Higher Quality Tenants

Think of tenant screening as the moat and draw bridge around your castle. It is certainly possible to get a bad tenant out of your home once they are in, but it’s a real hassle and you are so much better off not accepting them in the first place. A thorough screening process results in more reliable tenants that:

• Pay on time
• Stay in your property longer
• Put less wear and tear on the unit
• Generally cause less problems

An experienced property management company has seen thousands of applications and knows how to dig for the real facts about candidates and analyze that information for warning signs. By allowing a management company to handle the screening, you will also be shielding yourself from rental scams directed at owners, and discrimination lawsuits resulting from an inconsistent screening process. Typically bad tenants will target owner-managed rentals because they can’t pass muster with professional property managers. They know that when a property is for rent by owner, there will be less scrutiny of their financial or previous rental situations.

Tighter rent collection process

The way you handle rent collection and late payments can be the difference between success and failure as a landlord. Collecting rent in full every month is key to maintaining consistent cash-flow, and your tenants need to understand this is not negotiable. By hiring a property manager, you put a buffer between yourself and the tenant, and allow them to be the bad guy who has to listen to excuses, chase down rent, and when necessary, evict the person living in your property. Many property managers will tell you that it is considerably easier to manage other people’s units rather than their own for this reason.

Shorter vacancy cycles

A property manager will help you perform three critical tasks that affect how long it takes to fill your vacancies:

Improve and prepare the property for rent – A property manager will suggest and oversee cosmetic improvements that maximize revenue.

Determine the best rent rate – Too high and you are stuck waiting, to low and you’re losing money every month the tenant is in the unit. Determining the optimal price requires knowledge of the local market, data on recently rented comparables, and access to rental rate tools.

Effectively market your property – An experienced property management company has taken thousands of pictures, written hundreds of ads, and understands what to say and where advertise in order to get a larger pool of candidates in a shorter period of time.

Financial Accounting and Record Keeping

A professional property management company will keep complete and accurate financial records of your properties, along with providing you monthly statements showing income and expenses.  They will also provide you with an annual accounting of the property for the calendar year to assist you in more easily filing taxes.

Lower Maintenance and Repair Costs

Good maintenance and repairs keep tenants happy and preserve the value of your investment which make them a very important part of profitability. By hiring a management company you gain access to both our in-house maintenance staff, as well as our network of third party contractors who have already been vetted for good pricing and quality work. We manage these in-house and vendor relationships to ensure you are getting a quality of work and pricing that would be very difficult for an independent landlord to accomplish. This can translate into significant savings compared to going through the yellow pages and hiring a handyman yourself. Not only is the firm able to get volume discounts on the work, they also know the contractors and understand maintenance issues such that they are capable of intelligently supervising the work.

Increase the Value of Your Investment

Preventative maintenance is achieved through putting systems in place that catch and deal with maintenance and repair issues early on, before they grow into larger more costly problems. This requires a written maintenance check program, detailed maintenance documentation and regular maintenance visits. The management company can also offer you suggestions and feedback on upgrades and modifications, both how they will affect the rent you can charge, as well as their impact on maintenance and insurance.

Fewer Costly and Time-Consuming Legal Problems

Veteran landlords know it only takes one troublesome tenant to cause significant legal and financial headaches. A good property manager is armed with the knowledge of the latest landlord-tenant laws and will help ensure that you are not leaving yourself vulnerable to a potential law suit. Each state and municipality have their own laws, these plus federal law cover a number of areas including but not limited to:

• Tenant screening
• Fair Housing Requirements
• Safety and conditions of the property
• Inspections
• Lease Documents and addendums
• Terminating leases
• Evictions
• Handling security deposits

Personal Benefits for Owners

Less stress – Avoid having to deal with middle of the night emergencies, chasing down rent, marketing and showing during vacancies, evicting people from your property, rental scams, lousy or unreliable vendors, piles of financial paperwork.

More freedom – Live and invest wherever you want without the constraint of needing to be near your properties. Additionally you can live and travel without the requirement of always being available in the event that your tenants have a need you have to tend to. Once you have found a good management company, it doesn’t matter if you live in the same state or even the same country.

Free up more of your time – Time is money, and for many investors, their time can be more profitably spent in areas other than servicing their properties. When you focus on asset management you’re working ON your business, when you manage your own properties you work IN it. More so you have additional time to spend with family or friends doing things you enjoy.

Ensure Legal Compliance

Housing along with Landlord / Tenant laws are ever changing.  A professional property management company stays abreast of these laws to ensure your property and investments are best protected from lawsuits or housing complaints.  This includes regular review by an attorney of property management agreements, lease documents, and workplace standards to ensure you and your properties are best protected.