Every year, people spend more than $101 billion on one of the more than 310,000 property management services spread throughout the country!
That number could be bigger if more people knew about what a professional property management service company is. Many people do not realize that they could outsource certain aspects of property management that they do not enjoy managing themselves.
On the other hand, there are certainly some advantages that come with DIY property management.
Read on to learn all about the most important things to understand about how professional property management services compare to DIY alternatives!
Help You Find the Best Tenants
One of the most important things that professional property managers can help you with is tenant screening. Many people fail to realize just how crucial tenant screening is. On the other hand, professional property managers have acquired a long list of systems and techniques that help them to maximize the success of their tenant screening process.
There is an important principle called the Pareto principle. It states that 80% of the results from a system are often the result of only 20% of the dynamics in the system. So how does this apply to property management?
In many cases, it is only about 20% of your tenants that end up causing about 80% of your extra work. That is why tenant screening is so important. A single wrong tenant can mean many dozens of hours of extra week work spread out over each year.
However, there is a strong certain silver lining here. This also means that reducing the number of your tenants who cause extra work by just a few percentage points can have hugely disproportionate effects on your extra work. Focusing on tenant screening can mean having a lot less maintenance to have to focus on down the road.
When it comes to tenant screening, it is worth making it a priority. While many aspects of property management can be learned as you go over years of trial and error, tenant screening is something you want to get right from the very beginning.
In many cases, the most reliable way to get your tenant screening right is to rely on experts who already consistently perform successful tenant screening. That can mean working with a quality property management service.
Keep Your Units Fully Occupied
Sometimes, costs that are just as expensive on paper do not feel as expensive in our minds. In particular, having an empty unit for a month does not feel as costly as having to spend $1000 on repairs.
However, on paper, these costs can be exactly the same. And when it comes to dollars and cents, it is what the numbers show on paper that really matters.
Keeping all of your units occupied is a top priority if you want to maximize revenue. Of course, this can be extremely difficult to manage.
You do not always know that far in advance when people will be leaving. On top of that, it can be difficult to find the right prospective tenants to happen to be looking for properties at the exact right time.
That can make keeping all of your units occupied a constant game of touch and go. That is why this is one more area in which many competent property managers turn to the professionals for help.
Comply With All Legal Requirements
As we have already discussed, there are plenty of areas of property management that can be learned as you go. Unfortunately, learning by trial and error is not the most graceful system when it comes to complying with the law. Even a single bad mistake can lead to huge repercussions.
On top of that, the laws for property managers are often very complicated. The fact that they are written in dense legalese makes it only more difficult for property managers to get up-to-date on what the law asks of them. This problem is only further exacerbated by the fact that these laws often change.
As a result, complying with every aspect of the law can require a lot of experience and expertise. That is the kind of knowledge that professional property management services have developed over many years.
When it comes to complying with the law, professional property management services can help you. They know all the most common laws that property managers accidentally violate. They can also help you manage any difficult situations with tenants to ensure that you do not actually accidentally expose yourself to legal liability.
Professionals Can Help You Increase Your Total Profit
So why hire a property manager if you will have to increase your expenses to do so? In many cases, professional property managers not only save you time, but they also increase your revenue.
The end result can be that hiring professional property managers actually increases your total profit. Not everybody realizes that they could be enjoying greater profits while performing less work if they outsourced the right parts of their work to the right professionals. But if that is the situation you are in, then hiring a property manager is almost certainly the right choice for you!
That just leaves finding a great property manager, whether you do it by Googling “property manager near me” or by asking around for recommendations.
Work With a Professional Property Management Service
We hope learning about what a professional property management service can do for you has been helpful.
The more experience you have with managing property, the more likely you are to start looking for ways to increase efficiency through outsourcing. Outsourcing the parts of property management that you are least interested in or have the least experience with can be a powerful way to maximize your results.
That makes learning more about what property management services can do for you an investment. To learn more about how to succeed as a property manager, check out our other articles!