What Do Property Managers Do?
If you’ve ever considered real estate as a source of income, you’ve probably wondered if you could handle the ins and outs of day-to-day management. Rental properties can provide a substantial income, but if you want to take a hands-off approach, you should consider hiring a property manager to take care of your tenants for you. Let’s take a look at a few of the ways a property manager can make your life easier.
Finances
Generally, when a building owner hires a property manager, they want someone to ensure that tenants uphold their rental agreements and contracts. One of the primary functions of a property manager, then, is handling financial situations.
If you have fun interacting with your tenants and making friends with the people who live in your buildings, you may hesitate to hold them to the financial agreements you’ve put in place for them. Anything from dealing with unauthorized animals, to late fees to collecting rent, may be uncomfortable for you. At the least, they’re merely tedious and time-consuming when you have other areas to direct your focus.
Property managers excel at taking the burden and awkwardness away from your role. By hiring a third party to collect rent and fees from your tenants, you’ll remove yourself from the process and have the freedom to work through and maintain the relationships you want to. If you should so desire, you can delegate the bills, insurance, payroll, and taxes to a manager, leaving your finances in capable hands.
On-Call Services
As a landlord, many people assume that you have to be available at any time of day or night for your tenants to contact. If you’re part of the majority that doesn’t like being available 24/7, hiring a property manager can take some of that burden away. Even if you work a normal workday on-call, you can hire people or a company to take care of the second and third shifts, leaving you time to put your buildings out of your mind.
Making Arrangements
As a rental property owner, you’re responsible for taking care of your building or hiring the right people to care for it in your stead. However, you probably don’t enjoy all of the back-and-forth calls to contractors, trash collectors, repair workers, and anyone else you might need to keep up your property. It’s time-consuming, tedious, and takes your attention away from other important things.
If you hire a property manager and give them the power to speak for you in those areas, they can take care of the going-between and setup arrangements. They’ll be in control of keeping your property up to standards and have the authority to hire people to accomplish whatever needs to be done.
Administration
If you want to take a completely hands-off approach, you can set up your expectations in a contract with your property managers and let them have control of all the details. They can:
- Meet with potential renters for property showings,
- Use discretion to determine a tenant’s viability,
- Keep records of tenant activity,
- Track up-to-date rental laws and guidelines and ensuring your property complies with them,
- Adjust your rent prices to a fair rate for your market,
- Create reports at the right times to keep you updated on your property’s wellbeing.
If any or all of these tasks sound like headaches to you, you’ll do well to let one or more property managers take over for you. That way, you can sit back, relax, and enjoy the passive income of being a landlord.
Ready to let the experts handle your rental properties? Southern Property Management Group is here to help. Since 2006, we’ve been serving the continental United States with the ins and outs of managing rentals, from accounting to collections to security and administrative tasks. Contact us today and let us ease your burden as a landlord.
