Are You Making These 5 Rental Property Management Mistakes?
Managing a rental property can be challenging even for the most experienced property managers. As a property manager, you need to ensure that your tenants, workers, contractors, and your properties are in good shape.
If you are a property manager managing whether 1 or 100 rental properties, below are five rental property management mistakes you may be making.
- You Don’t Have A Screening Process in Place
As a property manager you are most likely to deal with all kinds of tenants. When you rent your property to a destructive or troublesome tenant, you are sure to lose money and deal with problems every day. One sure way to save yourself of these issues is to have a detailed formal tenant screening process that helps you select the right kind of tenants for your rental.
- You Don’t Have A Reliable Contractor When Issues Happen
Your tenants want the best service and quick solution to their maintenance problems. Not having a dedicated and reliable handyman you can call immediately will likely affect your tenant satisfaction and retention rates. As a property manager, you should have a list of reliable contractors for specific types of property maintenance issues.
- You Don’t Have A Maintenance Schedule
Most property managers wait until the appliances in their property develop faults or causes damage before doing maintenance. Not only does this delay aggravate the repair issue, you may be face with constant crises. As a property manager seeking to offer your tenants the best service, you should have a dedicated monthly or quarterly maintenance schedule.
Do a monthly maintenance check of your property alarms, electrical fittings, and outdoor landscape. By being proactive in your property maintenance, you keep your tenants satisfied and your home safe from sudden equipment breakdown.
- You Don’t Understand How To Attract New Tenants
Just like any other businesses, managing a rental property requires that you market your property aggressively to attract new renters. You need to understand what potential renters are looking at and what attracts new renters.
An easy way to do this is to create a profile of the neighborhood where your rental property is located and make a list of the amenities, economic activities, recreational centers, and the type of schools. This will help you target the right potential renters during your marketing process.
- Your Management System is Still Paper-Based
Shockingly, many property management companies systems are purely paper-based with little or no influence of technology. Not only does it make the process unorganized, it also leaves room for failure. As a property manager, you should adopt more of technology in the day-to-day running of your properties to save you and your tenants’ time.
And with the coronavirus pandemic, there has never been a better time to make the switch. Property managers are beginning to adopt online showing of their properties to potential renters. Potential tenants can now pay rents online, tour houses, and electronically sign lease agreement without the need to physically visit the property.
Final Thoughts
As a property manager, it is important that you satisfy your tenants and keep your rental properties in great condition. By having a dedicated maintenance schedule, you save not only money but improve the safety of your rental. Most importantly, having a reliable contractor on call to handle your rental repair issues will help in increasing your tenant satisfaction rate.