5 Benefits of Hiring a Property Manager & why it's better than doing it yourself

If you own real estate properties and are looking to rent them out to tenants, you will have two choices. Either you can seek the services of a property management company or you can manage the property yourself. A lot of property owners will try to save money by doing the property management tasks themselves. However, this can be a hassle because you must devote so much of your time to dealing with tenants and addressing their concerns. If there are problems on the property and things need fixing, you will likely have to do those repairs and maintenance tasks yourself. Unless you are already retired from your main job, you simply won’t have the time to devote to handling these tasks. You will need to pay someone else to help you deal with them.

If you’re working in collaboration with a property developer, I’m sure they have already recommended the use of a property manager in order to protect their investment, as professional property developers have much knowledge in this area. For advice, I recommend a consultation with a property developer.

Below are the 5 main benefits of hiring a property manager instead of doing it yourself:

1) Low Tenant Turnover – A successful property manager knows the importance of pleasing renters. If you were to ignore your renters’ requests and not address their concerns, the first thing they’ll want to do is leave your property and go somewhere else. When you have a high turnover rate like this, it becomes difficult and more time-consuming to manage a property because you keep having to find new tenants. On the other hand, if tenants are kept happy then the turnover rate will be low because those tenants will stay at the property for a long time.

2) Screen Tenants – Property management companies have the tools and resources to conduct background checks and credit checks on all tenants. This helps reduce the risk of having non paying tenants or those who don’t have the means to pay their rent. When these situations arise, you usually must go to court to evict the tenants and this can become costly for you as the landlord. That is why you will want a professional property manager to screen all applicants and ensure that only the most qualified ones get accepted as tenants.

3) Payment Collection – Professional property managers will have the responsibility of collecting rent money from the tenants. This is a very important task because if you were to let tenants just mail you a check, then you would likely never get your rent money. Besides, you don’t really want to put up with the hassle of driving to your property and collecting rent money from each of your tenants. Then you’ll have to hear excuses from some of them about why they don’t have the money. Sometimes they’ll even get physically violent if you pressure them too much about the rent. Therefore, let a professional property manager take on that stress for you.

4) Daily Management – A property manager is expected to be on-call every day to answer questions and help tenants. As a property owner, you may not want to devote all this time to handling everybody’s concerns. A professional property management company will take on this burden and manage your property every single day. They will answer questions, screen tenants, accept tenants, fix problems, collect rent money, and so on. In some cases, like with apartment buildings, the property manager would actually live and work on the property because managing it would be a full-time job.

5) Handle Repairs – When it comes to making small mediocre repairs on the property, you don’t want to have to drive down to the property every time one of these repairs needs to be made. It is better to let a property manager handle all those problems. If there ends up being a major problem that needs fixing, such as a plumbing leak, then the property manager will be there to assess the situation and then give you a full report on what is going on. From there, you can hire the necessary professional to go to the property and fix the problem for you.