Greetings all, I'll start as others do and praise these forums, my knowledge has increased exponentially since joining, so thank you to one and all.
Its happened, I have the entrepreurial bug, I have had some bad experiences with Property managers over the years and I have decided to try my hand at the RE trade and see how I go. I am starting a property management and RE business and I want to provide customer service outside the box and be creative with the solutions I can provide to my clients.
So basically what I am hoping to get from you guys as investors is some suggestions on what you wish your property manager did for you, lets try to keep it fairly realistic and above board though, lol. Here are some of the ideas I have so far to get things started, feel free to critique, constructively of course…..
An all inlcusive fee, no extra charges for admin, paper, postage etc.
Discount for mulitple property clients
Fee to provide initial advertising and screening then client takes over the ongoing managementSo I will leave it to you and hopefully we can generate some great discussion and win-win-win solutions. Not looking to take over the world, just provide investors with better customer service.
Reply promptly to any and all communication with landlords.
My best property manager is proactive and does things like carrying out three monthly checks on smoke detectors to ensure that they are working, emails statements, spoke with the tenant and increased their rent by ten dollars a week to cover the water accounts when they come in each quarter. The tenant doesn't have to budget for this and the money is always there to pay the bill when it is due. Any money left in the account when (and if) the tenant moves out, is refunded to her. This tenant has been in my property since the day i settled and has been there for two and a half years so far.As soon as a landlord lets you know that they are buying the property as a rental start to seek tenants for the property so that they are ready to move in on the day of settlement (or even before if the vendor agrees) I ahve two properties with the aforementioned PM and one was leased prior to settlement when the vendor moved into their new property three weeks before settlement.
This PM even looked at properties listed for sale that were listed by both the RE that she worked for as well as other REs, giving me feedback on the quality of each property, what they would lease for, any work that needed doing etc. These properties are located about 800 km from where i live, i am yet to see either of them and i have never had a problem with either property..
this is what i can think of off the top of my head.
thanks sonyasal, I really appreciate the feedback. I have been tossing a heap of options around in my head on which way to do some things and the word pro-active always resonates so I think I'm definitely on the right track if landlords are appreciating that style.
Most of the negative feedback I have gotten from friends about their PM's is that they are very reactive and don't communicate very well so I wil be making sure that the lines of communication are open and used regularly.
Hi Shane – no contact details on your website at all! I was going to have a look what area you were in but there is no address, email or phone number to reach you on. Might be an idea to put them on
Hi Shane,
I have two investment properties, one in Canberra and one in Melbourne. I use a real estate agency to manage my place in Melbourne and I'm not very happy with their service (if I can call it that). They are very reactionary, and usually to me contacting them! The house in Canberra is managed by a property management agency (they also sell houses for a set rate). They are great, and I would recommend them to anyone with an investment property in Canberra. I think it was last year, but LiveIn won the property manager of the year award. They truelly are prfoessional in their business.
Here is a link to their website, which should give you an idea of what they offer:
I agree with the comments of others on this forum, be proactive and respond to communicationsin a timely fashion, both to the landlord and the tennant.
Good luck!
Mike
Thanks Rachel and Mike for the comments. Rachel, that is a big oversight on my part I will get in and update that asap.
Mike, thanks for the link I will check them out, going by your post they seem to be very similar to what I am trying to achieve.
I really want to manouvre away from the big stick approach to property management using the threat of legal and financial ramification as the motivating factor for tenants to pay their rent on time. I manage my own properties by offering the tenants incentives to pay on time and even provide gift baskets to them at Xmas time if the property is being looked after (which they always have done).
As a property owner, if I as your property manager came to you and asked if you would be willing to spend $30/month on an incentive for the tenant to pay their rent before the due date, would you be interested or do you see that as an unnecessary expense?
Shane i would personally view $30 per month as an unnecessary expense. i do give presents to my tenants at Christmas, usually movie passes, but i could not justice paying $30 per month. Remember tenants are contracted to pay their rent on time, so they should be doing this as a matter of course. I also have three of my properties rented by single parents and their rent is direct debitted from their centrelink payments before they recieve it. therefore my rental payments are never late.
These payments can also be direct debitted from all pensioners, aged, unemployed etc.
Cheers
Sonya
Fair point Sonya, $30 is a little extravagant I have to admit, i fit were more like $15 which is say the cost of tow movie tickets (on cheap night, lol) then it might make the equation a little better. What I definitely want to do is avoid that big stick approach, I am just looking for every possible way to encourage tenants to pay early or on time rather than punish them for being late. Its all about creating a positive result for tenant, landlord and property manager, and if there is an outside the square way to achieve that then that is what I want to employ.
Provide a statement at the end of the financial year that lists income and dispersments.
Renew the lease before it expires
If the tenant has not paid the rent send them and landlord a letter stating that eviction will commence in 14 days if payment not received.Looked at web site code.
You need to change the meta name description from home to your business name.
You need to put in keywords in HTML code so search engines can crawl your web site and find search terms.What geographical locations are rental properties managed and sold.
Cheers Duckster.
The Website – I am currently waiting for an upgraded site to be developed for me by another company. My current site is a simple template I have modified which is supplied by the company hosting my site. Unfortunately I know sfa at this point in time about changing the HTML code so that search engines pick up my site. What I will do is make sure all the things you mentioned I discuss with the guys developing my new site. Thanks for the tips though, I am learning more and more every day, which I love.
Scratch Property is based in Mackay, Central Qld and services Mackay and the mining towns in the Bowen Basin west of Mackay including Moranbah, Dysart and Middlemount.
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