Benefits of hiring a property manager for your rental property

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1. Love the post Joey. I’m leaving work in 20 mins to visit a lawyer to get advice on how to structure my first business. A PROPERTY MANAGEMENT COMPANY!~ Between my girlfriend and I we have 5 doors, soon to be 8 (made a private deal on a triplex last night). We have been managing these properties ourselves, and it has been a lot of work, At first we didn’t have the right systems in place. We thought managing them would be simple, and that the wrinkles would smooth themselves out. THEY DO NOT!~ So I have been actively working on building the systems that we require. The more systems we put in place, the smoother things go. I still have a long way to go, but my goal is to structure a company, and offer my property management systems as a service to other local RE Investors here in my home Region of Durham. One of my goals is to become a full time Real Estate Entrepreneur, and I believe that the skill sets that I have are ideal for being Property Manager. I’m Super Excited!~ Thanks for the chance to share, I can’t wait until we cross paths again.

   You’re the BEST Joey.

   -Tyler Mossman

2. Thank you for the kind words Tyler!

   That is so awesome you’re building a REAL real estate business 🙂 and congratulations on your newest property!

   You’re exactly right about systems and procedures.

   This is what many people miss.

   Whenever I am coaching someone about business, one of the first things I teach them is to measure and document everything.

   Because this creates your systems.

   It helps identify your key performance indicators (KPI) and so forth.

   If you’re that diligent about property management for your personal properties, you probably have what it takes to help other real estate entrepreneurs live the life they want like I’ve posted here.

   Congrats on everything…

   Let me know where I can help!

   Cheers

3. Great post Joey from another PM. We now manage 250 doors and I can say, with a staff of over 10, systems are a must but it really is all about relationships. Sure we have the systems in place to collect rents, and perform lease ups, and take maintenance calls 24×7, and manage the property for maximum value, but what we really provide our clients is relationship management. We have to manage our client relations (about 75), manage our tenant relations (about 750), and the most difficult…inter-tenant relations(can’t even guess at that number). Regrettably Relationship Management cannot be systematized. It is an art, not a science. And one I always admit I am still learning.

   Tyler, congratulations on starting your business. If you ever want to chat about the PM Business over a coffee would love to meet up with you. I know we can always learn from each other.

   Joey great post. Look forward to the next one.

4. Thank you Randy! I agree. Relationships sell…to both the tenant and the investor.

   This is what I look for in any of my team members – if they can be the face of my company and project what I stand for and support what I’m against, they are A+ in my books.

   Any business in my opinion needs to put relationships first – most however, don’t. They put money first. And what ends up happening is that it COSTS them more money to keep building new (short term) relationships.

   I’ve had tenants in my properties for more than 5 years…and that’s because we choose the right properties, in the right areas and treat them like we want to be treated.

   You and I are both learning Randy…as you’ve said.

   It’s a science and it’s always improving.

   Thanks for stepping into the conversation.

5. Hi Joey, great post. It has me thinking. I trade @ 10 hours a day for a J.O.B. (just over broke). I feel the need to trade this time for something more on my terms. Good to hear the feedback from the PMs and how they will be necessary for my next phase of real estate. I think it is time to kick it up a notch.

6. 🙂 I hear that David!!!

   And thanks for your comment!

   Everything I ‘teach’ to investors like you is about “your own terms”…not real estate “strategies”….because that’s all out there – and they really don’t change.

   What is important and personal, is HOW we set up our lives WITH real estate fitting in.

   This post regarding property managers is just putting into perspective how they fit into our real estate business…once we understand that there is a cost of doing business to HAVE the life we want for our terms…EVERYTHING changes!

   Let me know how things go!

7. Hi Joey,

   I am just having this debate as I have two empty units in my four plex and I am spending all my “time” there to repair them and get them up to par. My time would be much better spent on other parts of my business. A property management company, which I thought at one point i could do as well, would allow for both.

   I would rather be spending my time evaluating my present portfolio and following up on the parts of this business I would rather be doing. I am learning, with your help, that my time is my most important asset.

   Thank you for the great article. Hope I can find a great PM company here to run things now…..
   cheers,

   Janet

8. You’re exactly right Janet – your time is worth a lot more than “repair” time.

   I’m super happy I’m able to help you realize the value of your time.

   For now, would it benefit you to hire local handy-people to do the work while you locate a great PM company?

9. Finding the right PM is critical, otherwise you can spend even more time cleaning up after their mess. I’ve hired 4 over the last 5 years for different properties in 2 different cities. One was “REIN Certified” who ended up stealing thousands from me, almost had all the utilities cut off and missed two mortgage payments. I had to threaten legal action just to get my money back 6 weeks after firing him. My biggest mistakes were: not catching it sooner (don’t abdicate the responsibility) and hiring companies that were stretched too thin. Any advice on numbers of doors per manager suggestions? In my experience, 350/ PM is a bit much.

   Great posts Joe. Still gun shy about letting go of the reins close to home, but it does “waste” a lot of my time.

10. Hey Ryan – that sucks about the PM stealing from you. You’re not the first to mention something like that.

    I honor the fact that you’re taking ownership and responsibility for not keeping track of things.

    This is exactly the kind of thing I’d like to help others with (and thank you for sharing your story) because they’re either not treating investing as a business and doing things all themselves or thinking when they DO hire people they can literally walk away.

    That’s not the case. If you had a factory with employees, would you just let them do the work without checking on it?

    I’ve never been asked about the “numbers per door” before and honestly don’t have an answer. I guess it’s because I’m constantly monitoring my PMs and they have checklists / duties to perform for me each month outside of the normal collect rent and put the remaining profit in my account.

    It sounds’ like you’ve got a comfortable gauge anyway…so stick with that

    I can totally see why you’d want to keep doing the close to home stuff from the rotten history you’ve had with your other PM, but like you’ve said, it’s “wasting” a lot of time.

    And isn’t time the very thing we’re looking to have MORE of? 😉

    Thanks for the time to comment Ryan!