Owning a rental property can be a great source of steady income with an opportunity to improve your personal financial status. However, if you have one or more than one property to manage, this task can be quite time-consuming, so hiring a property management company can take off your burden to a very great extend giving you enough time to enjoy the surplus income generated by your property investment. Professional Full-time Property Management Service Company – Always look for and hire a professionally managed and led company who know the rules and regulations and are experts in the field and have been in this business for years. You don’t want to hand over your property to a novice.
Here are some of the tips before hiring a competent property manager:
- Ask for Sample Properties being managed – Always ask your prospective property management service company to share the address of the properties that they manage and some of the clients contact details in order to take a feedback from them. If you do this kind of research and get some positive feedback then you can go ahead with this service provider.
- Property Inspection – Inquire about the property inspection routine from inside and outside and analyse if this should be appropriate according to your satisfaction or on the basis of the tenure of the tenant.
- Eviction of bad tenants – Ask your property management service company to provide the details of the eviction on the current properties, this ratio will enable you to analyse if the screening of the tenants is being done properly or not. Also check whether the company maintains the contact details of the family, friends & workplace of the tenants. Sometimes, in emergencies, these details are very helpful.
- Repairs and Maintenance issues – Know from the company as to how they manage the maintenance or the repairs of the property whether it is a monthly fixed amount or charged on as need arises. Fixing a certain limit before taking approval is also a good practice unless there is a grave situation which needs immediate action without approval. Understand in detail on how these expenses are made, how these expenses are authorised and by whom. You don’t want unnecessary expenses on your rental property. Lower maintenance expenses improve the rental yield or income of the premise.
- Rent transfer Time Frame and monthly process – You need to be very clear about the monthly quarterly or yearly accounting, which needs to be mutually agreed, whether you will be receiving the rent for the current month in the same month or a month later. If there are monthly maintenance bills which need to be cleared to ensure a proper invoice is raised for the service rendered. Check whether the company will provide some kind of web login account or mobile app which could help you in knowing the rental income of the premises in a real team.
- Review the details of the Contract – Who is responsible for bearing all the late fee charges or any charges pertaining to the property due to negligence?
- Agreement – A proper agreement needs to be in place in order to carry the contract ahead, understand all the terms and conditions, termination clauses, and timely communication to be mentioned in the agreement.
Last but not the least ensure that your property manager is available to answer all your queries and hand over all the statements of accounts and explain things that you have doubts about, you don’t want to hire a company that is too busy acquiring new clients and neglect the existing ones.
