Real estate investing is a complex business. Property owners must spend time monitoring the market and seeking opportunities to expand their portfolios of rental homes. Handling financing, calculating cap rates, and staying ahead of trends in desirable amenities is a full time job. But investors won’t be successful without low vacancy rates and reliable tenants. The advantages of using a property manager include screening tenants, collecting rent, and scheduling maintenance, among many others.
Fewer Legal Problems
Professional property management companies understand housing laws and regulations. Navigating federal, state, and local landlord-tenant law requires expertise and experience to avoid costly lawsuits. Problems can arise at any point in the landlord-tenant relationship, from tenant screening to enforcing lease policies and handling evictions. The advantages of using a property manager include standardization of processes to ensure all tenants are treated equally and fairly, while also being held to required standards of behavior in the rental property.
Lower Vacancy Rates
Professional property managers keep occupancy rates higher. It starts with marketing to attract quality tenants to apply to lease a rental home. This includes helping set appropriate rental rates that will both attract tenants and provide a good rate of return on the property. A practiced eye in the screening process can identify potential problem tenants with sketchy finances and spotty rental histories. When the property manager finds quality tenants for your properties, they work to retain them through excellent and responsive tenant services. When tenants do move on, property managers get the home ready for new tenants quickly and efficiently, reducing the amount of time the home is vacant.
Cost Efficient Maintenance
Property managers foster and maintain relationships with maintenance and repair providers to ensure appliances, HVAC, plumbing, and electrical systems operate as they should, and problems are addressed quickly. Their knowledge of local service providers who are licensed and insured saves property owners time, money, and the hassle of looking for home repair pros for properties scattered across different cities.
Collecting Rent, Holding Security Deposits, and Financial Documentation
Your property manager will collect rent and late fees, and hold security deposits in separate accounts as required by applicable law. Most importantly, they’ll see that the property owner receives rent payment deposits reliably and on time.
An experienced, professional property manager will also help property owners maintain financial documentation necessary for legal defense and preparing taxes. This includes repair and maintenance invoices and payment records, documentation of damage to a property to support retention of a security deposit, and records on each tenant’s lease and rental payments.
Using a property manager saves property owners time and stress, and frees the owner to invest and live where they want, rather than being tied to one city or neighborhood. Excalibur Homes offers investment property management in Atlanta, Georgia and surrounding suburbs.
