If You Have More Properties Than You Can Count, And Not Enough Time To Deal With Them All, It’s Time To Start Thinking About Getting Some Help. Here’s When You Should Hire a Property Manager

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What’s a property manager?

Property managers manage your applicants and tenants. They will also market your property, meet tenants, collect the rent and also get it to you, and organize repairs. They will deal with all tenant complaints and help you if you have to evict a tenant or go through a legal matter. Property managers keep you up to date by letting you know what is going on with the property, without stressing you out about it. They handle the problems and simply inform you of what issue went on and how it was handled. The way to know if you haimages-1ve a bad property manager is if you are even more stressed out than when you hired them. An example of this would be receiving many phone calls asking what they should do about a situation, such as “He still hasn’t given rent for January; what should I do?”

Property managers are actually a luxury that most landlords can’t afford to pay for. Keep in mind that you don’t need a property manager to maintain and rent your property. You just need to be able to develop tools and resources. Whether or not you should hire one depends on how much you can spend on one, and whether or not it is worth it to you.

How to Decide if You Should Hire One

The first question to ask yourself is how many properties or rentals that you own. If you can’t even say the number without making a list on paper, you should definitely hire one. If you don’t live close to the property and don’t have time to drive there every time you need to, you also should probably hire one.

42_comm_property_mgr.ju_Are you good with details and managing your time? If you are, you can probably handle it on your own. Again, it still depends on how much time you have to dedicate to your property. If you do not have the knowledge to manage your property, and don’t have time to learn how to, you should probably hire one.  Are you detailed? Perhaps property management does not interest you, or you are not detail oriented. If you are not an organized person, then you should consider giving the responsibility to a professional. Do you have the necessary skills and knowledge? If you have no idea what you are doing, and don’t want to learn, then don’t try to do it yourself.

You need to think about your schedule. If you are very, very busy then you should hire someone. If you are too busy to handle repairs as they come, or deal with showing your apartment, not hiring a property manager will cost you more than paying one, since you’ll either not have your apartment rented, or tenants constantly moving out because you are a bad landlord. The percentage that a property manager collects for themselves varies from each company, so you’ll have to research some property management companies and ask what their fees are.

If you’re having a hard time renting your apartment and can’t figure out why, then you obviously need help in the marketing department. This is another benefit of property managers. They market it for you on all of the websites such as Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads, and Rent Jungle.

Comments 2

  • I’ve had property managers before (back when I had properties) and they were a GODSEND!

    • Property managers can be an extreme asset. If a landlord doesn’t have the time to manage their properties, they certainly should get one, for stress reasons like the article states. HOWEVER, another great reason to hire one is because tenants will get upset if things aren’t fixed in a timely manner. So, if you don’t have time to check on the property, better to pay someone to do it rather than have tenants simply leave.

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