Successful property management means staying on top of your finances and managing maintenance requests and tenant communications efficiently.
Successful property management involves numerous practices, from securing funding and finding deals to managing tenants and organising routine maintenance. Managing your properties can be a complex and time-consuming part of being a real estate investor.
In this article, we take a look at some top industry tips for streamlining your property management so that you can save time and money and scale your business.
10 Tips for successful property management
Understand the value of your time
Your time is a limited resource and as your portfolio starts, you simply can’t do everything yourself. Knowing the value of your time means being conscious of which tasks you take on yourself, and which you can be done by a good property manager like Rent Square. In order to manage your time most efficiently you need first to understand where it is the most impactful for you to spend it. Then, you need to get a support team that can take on the roles and duties that you yourself may not have the time to do properly.
For example, you should undertake routine inspections of each of your properties, quarterly. If your properties have a lot of properties, then doing all of these inspections yourself is simply not an efficient use of your time. In this scenario, employing a property manager to manage inspections for you will allow you to focus on the big picture items.
Make sure your property is fit for habitation
As a landlord, you have a legal obligation to ensure your property is fit and habitable. In New Zealand we have the the Healthy Homes legislations to guide you. Rent Square Property Management will make this easy for you. Before renting your property out then, you need to ensure it meets all the minimum health and safety requirements. This means checking and safety testing the following:
Structural elements of the building are secure and intact, including floors, stairs, walls, and roofs
Common areas, like hallways and stairways, are in a safe and clean condition
Electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning systems and elevators are operating safely
Hot water heaters and heating systems work appropriately at reasonable times
Known environmental toxins, like lead paint dust, asbestos, and mould, are managed appropriately
The threat of foreseeable criminal intrusions is reasonably reduced
Infestations of rodents and other vermin are exterminated.
Keep concise written records
Running a rental is running a business and you have legal obligations toward your tenants. As part of this, it becomes essential to document all communications that go on between your tenants and yourself and to ensure that everything from the tenancy agreement document and bond to maintenance requests and notices to enter is all recorded in the proper written format and these records kept safely for posterity. Rent Square Property Management will handle all of these for you on your behalf.
Thorough tenant screening
One of the biggest issues landlords face is rogue tenants. Rogue tenants either refuse to or can’t pay the rent on time and in full every single week, cause damage to property or otherwise operate out of the property in an illegal fashion.
In a worst-case scenario, you will have to evict these tenants. Evictions are a long and arduous process costing you additional money and taking sometimes as long as 6 months to complete. This can be an extreme hindrance to successful property management.
The best cure to this issue is prevention, and the best way to prevent issues is to ensure that you rent to the very best qualified tenants. So how do you find the best tenants? You need to create your listing, collect applications, pre-screen your tenants, organise viewings and once you have likely candidates, run a thorough tenant screening and background check on all of them. The easiest and most time-effective way to do this is to make use of Rent Square Property Management as your personal property manager.
Time management
As mentioned previously, your time is a limited resource. How and where you spend your time is important to determine. Figuring out where to spend your time in the most rewarding fashion will allow you to get the most return on your time investment.
Every investor is different and we’ll value things in different ways if, for example, you’re looking to grow and scale your portfolio then you might find that you want to be spending most of your time finding and securing great deals. Alternatively, you might want the financial freedom that owning rental properties with passive income brings. You may want this, for example, so you can spend more time with your family.
In the end, it’s all about what matters most to you. Having a great property manager like Rent Square Property Management in place that allows you to organise your time and reap the rewards of your hard work is vital.
Regular Inspections
Properties are notorious for those big-ticket maintenance items. You often hear about the landlord with a property that required a whole new floor or a new roof. However, more often than not, these expensive jobs are preventable if you catch them early enough. Regular inspections is one way for you to keep an eye on your property and identify potential issues before they become massive problems.
Another key reason to do regular property inspections is to ensure that your tenants are looking after the property in the way that they should. Respectful tenants will treat the property like a home, keep it clean and tidy and report maintenance issues to you. However, you can’t solely rely on your tenants to maintain and look after your property. You also need a property manager like Rent Square Property Management that will take care of it like it is their own. At the end of the day, it is your property and your money on the line.
Schedule preventative maintenance
In line with our previous point, scheduling preventative maintenance will help ensure that issues don’t become problems. Preventive maintenance can be anything from cleaning gutters to doing yard work or replacing leaky faucets, regularly inspecting appliances to cleaning your HVAC system.
Not only will preventative maintenance allow you to control the cost of larger maintenance needs for your property, it would also prevent many of the potential complaints that your tenants will make throughout the year. This means you won’t need to deal with half as many maintenance requests and you won’t constantly be on the back foot trying to fix issues as they arise.
Collecting rent
Traditional methods for collecting rent such as cash and checks are outdated, insecure, and inefficient. These methods require tenants to make a physical trip to the bank in the post office or for you yourself to visit the property on a monthly basis to collect the rent. On top of this, cash and checks can easily be lost or stolen.
A better and more efficient way to collect the rent is using online payment software. Rent Square Property Management uses the latest technology ensuring quality.
Understand your finances
As a real estate investor, you need to know your finances inside and out. You need to have oversight of your monthly cash flow, you need to know exactly where money is being spent and where money can be saved.
However, it can be challenging without the right tools to keep accurate records throughout the year. Without these records and access to reports you could easily find yourself overspending, overpaying taxes, and potentially even falling into negative cash flow. Rent Square Property Management provides you with a monthly report to help with this.
Know when to ask for help
Managing one or multiple rental properties? There comes a time when we all need to reassess our investments, goals, and the future. At Rent Square Property Management, we’re here to help you navigate your options and maximize your portfolio’s potential.
Let’s discuss how we can support you—contact us today!
M: 021 755 214
コメント