Hiring A Property Manager
So, you’ve decided to hire a property manager to make your investing business run a little bit more smoothly. How should you go about finding one? I’d start with your real estate agent, your investor friends, and your local investing group. Gather names of the property managers whom they have had good experiences with. If you don’t have these resources, or none of your investor contacts use a property manager, you’ll have to turn to other sources, like past advertising you’ve received as an absentee owner and/or the yellow pages or an online equivalent.
As with hiring out any service, it’s always a good idea to interview at least three different property managers to get a feel for what reasonable fees and procedures for your market are. You may be surprised at how much they vary.
Whether you’ve received a personal recommendation or you are calling on advertising, it’s really important to thoroughly interview your prospective property manager.
Certain information is vital and obvious to ask about, like what their fees are, how they prescreen tenants and when and how they will send you your rents due.
Other things are also important to ask about, but finding out the nitty gritty details of how each step of their eviction process works is not as important as determining whether they are knowledgeable about how to do an eviction. If someone is able to respond confidently and with detail to your questions, it implies that they have systems in place that they know and follow. This is important if you want your property manager to decrease your landlording headaches. You want to hire someone who is well organized, knows what to do and will act promptly when necessary.
Remember that fees are negotiable, so before you decide on who to hire, try to get the best rate possible from the property manager that you have the most confidence in.
To see our full list of questions that we recommend asking a property manager before hiring them, check out our Property Manager Interview Questions for our Real Estate Investor Bronze Members.
Until my next post,
James
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