3 Situations When It's Time To Bring In A Professional Management Company For Your Rental Investments
Posted on: 2 July 2018
Do you know when it's time to stop managing your units by yourself and hire a professional property investment company? While many owners enjoy the personal touch of renting out their units personally, the process of finding tenants, screening them, collecting rent, performing inspections, and maintaining the property can quickly become burdensome. Property management companies make it easier to treat your real estate investments as passive income by taking over the process of renting them to tenants. To help you decide, here are three situations when it's a good idea to turn the keys over to a trusted professional.
1. You Own Rental Investments Outside Your Local Area
Whether you've inherited property in another state or started investing in new housing markets, renting far-away properties presents special challenges. You won't be familiar with tenant regulations in the new area and won't know which contractors perform quality work. You will also have difficulty performing regular inspections on your property to ensure that your tenants are keeping your units in good condition.
To solve these problems, hire a property manager in the distant market to take over the duty of renting out your properties. Good property management companies are familiar with the markets that they operate in, including where to advertise to find renters and all state and local tenant laws. They will also conduct regular property inspections for you and enforce the terms of your lease to prevent problem tenants from reducing the value of your real estate investments.
2. You Aren't Familiar With Local Tenant Laws
Property management companies can provide legal services that reduce your liability when renting your properties. It's important to be very familiar with tenant law when renting out your properties, as you open yourself up to legal action when you fail to comply with regulations.
For example, you're required to maintain your units in a livable condition and promptly conduct all emergency repairs. However, it can be difficult to know what maintenance problems in your units constitute a non-livable condition and which require emergency repairs. By being experts in local tenant laws and aware of which maintenance problems have been deemed emergencies by local courts, property management companies help reduce your legal liability by performing maintenance and repair before your tenants take legal action against you.
Eviction is a complicated legal process that property management companies will assist you in navigating. Evicting a problem tenant can be difficult and opens you up to legal liability if you do not follow the process correctly. It's also the first time when many tenants will seek legal representation against you, which can open yourself up to further liability if you have not been complying with tenant law. When you hire a property management company, they will handle the eviction process for you in an efficient manner while complying with local tenant laws.
3. You're Overwhelmed By Managing Too Many Rental Units
Finally, property management companies relieve you from the burden of personally managing your properties. Finding tenants, showing units, performing inspections, maintaining your properties, and fielding calls from your tenants will all eat up a significant portion of your time. If you have a lot of rental properties or are working a full-time job, the duties of renting out your properties can quickly become too much to handle. Hiring a property management company allows you to passively collect income from your investments and frees up your time.
Turning your units over to professional management is a big decision, so it's important to find a property management company that you can trust. Contact a company such as Block & Associates Realty to learn more about their services.
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