Owning a rental property is a good way to make money on the side. Over time, there’s a possibility for your initial rental unit to turn into several and replace your main income entirely. As a landlord, you play a vital role in ensuring that the property is in top shape and that new and prospective tenants have access to you whenever questions regarding rent, maintenance issues, etc arise.
The requests and demands from tenants can be tasking and time-consuming for landlords. Many rental property owners choose to avoid the stress of managing their properties by hiring a property management company. However, for rental property owners that want to take on a more hands-on approach, a preferable option will be to build a team that will handle and manage the many tasks of property management. It is not enough to become a property manager in your state, building a dynamic team takes work and effort. You need to be able to identify top-tier talent to make up your team. Ultimately, the reward is the ability to grow your portfolio, dominate your market, and provide essential services for other landlords and their tenants.
Are you serious about building a property management team? Keep these in mind:
Hire Motivated and Qualified Professionals
You should be able to identify top talent and know who fits into your work culture, mission, and vision. Relevant work experience is essential and you should be on the lookout for this during the hiring process. Additionally, prospective applicants should equally possess soft skills like excellent communication skills, a positive attitude, a strong work ethic, scrupulous attention to detail, patience, and persuasiveness.
On your quest to find experienced professionals who understand your market area, don’t lose sight of the core functions of your property management team and use them to steer your search. Ideally, you’ll need professionals with backgrounds in the following areas:
- Administrative Tasks
- Rental Property Showings
- Business Development
- Marketing and screening new tenants
- Tenant Eviction processes
- Property Maintenance
- Performing Onsite repairs
- Performing Rent Collection
- Lease Terms Adjustments
- Coordinating Move-ins and Move-outs for tenants
- Drafting and drawing up leases in compliance with the law.
- Performing bookkeeping and staying organized
Filling these roles requires professionals with relevant experience in the rental property and/or real estate industries. These individuals need to possess excellent people skills and must be intellectually curious, self-driven, and willing to continue educating themselves on the legal and practical side of maintaining rental properties.
Develop and Implement a System of Organization
It’s pretty easy to be engulfed in the hiring and team-building processes to a point where you aren’t exemplary. Leading by example includes your work approach and ability to stay organized.
“Monkey See, Monkey Do” If you build or bring a new team into a work environment that is disorganized and cluttered with client files everywhere, rest assured your team will follow suit.
An organized system promotes efficiency and enables the progress of work to be easily tracked.
A good system for your new property management company should include:
- A comprehensive business plan that is backed by research and includes financial projections.
- Preparedness plans and emergency procedures.
- A frequently updated employee handbook.
- Clear and organized locations for sorting and storing invoices, tenant and property owner documents, incoming and outgoing mail, etc.
- Contact details for all parties, that includes vendors, contractors, management and workforce.
- It is also important to build an office environment that is work friendly and conducive to concentration. Many studies demonstrate the importance of having a good work environment. It is considered a high-ranking factor when it comes to employee turnover.
Adopt and Develop a Customer Service Approach
Customer service is indispensable in any business particularly property management. As a landlord, you are essentially in business to serve others. Managing rental properties is a good way to make money, however, you shouldn’t forget that your clients count on you for housing and timely responses when they need help.
Developing a customer-centric approach is important, take this responsibility seriously by training your property management team on it. Customer service mindsets come with some important reminders for property owners.
- Your tenants should know that you take privacy seriously. Educate your team members on how important it is for them to provide at least a 24 hours’ notice before entering one of your rental property units.
- Quick response time should be a top priority for your team, this includes weekends. Train your team members to delight your clients with professionalism, politeness and a calm demeanor no matter what happens.
- Be fair when it comes to refunds and security deposits. Try to avoid overly punitive policies and confusion over the expectations of clients.
- A clear move-out checklist should be provided for each tenant. If you need to charge a tenant for damage, itemize the deposit deduction to ensure transparency and have a realistic approach about the costs for repairs.
- Another crucial reminder is to ensure that each role is clearly defined with specific targets. If roles are not clearly defined that means there is an absence of structure. Consequently, your team won’t be able to deliver the exceptional customer service your tenants deserve if there is a lack of coordination, uncertainty, redundancy over who responds to calls, performs other management duties or escalates issues.
Use The Right Software
Good software makes work processes easy and its importance cannot be overemphasized. Choosing the right operations and accounting software is critical to your organizational success. It is as important as keeping your physical records and office space neat and tidy.
The ideal software solution will include features like guidance for tax compliance, leasing management, budgeting tools, organizing vendor and employee contact information, guidance, and general document storage.
It is preferable to go for a software solution that provides mobility and can allow you and your representatives to set up accounts for each team member. More so, Landlords should also give thought to employees’ ability to access software across multiple platforms.
Work with Good Contractors
It is an unpleasant experience when landlords take calls about broken appliances or requests for emergency repairs. This is one of the reasons why property management teams need a reliable contractor or a team of contractors on standby.
A good way to begin your search for a reliable contractor is to look for contractors through local listings, referrals, or word of mouth. Also, It’s never a bad idea to give your insurance company a call; it is possible they have good working relationships with reliable contractors in your area.
Network, Build Relationships and Make Connections
Lastly, go out of your way to network, build relationships and make connections with other professionals who may make great additions to your team.
Don’t try to rush the process of building your team all at once. It is preferable to build your property management team slowly as your business ramps up. Over time, you can add individuals who are driven to step in and respond to tenant problems and maintain your properties.
Regularly do an assessment of your team to see how they are performing. Ask questions and get feedback, check for tools they could use to improve their work and make the lives of your tenants easier.
Building a property management team is no easy feat. For the odds to be in your favor you will need access to professionals whose knowledge and work experience complement yours. If you are supportive, encouraging, positive, involved, and interested, your team will definitely stick with you for the long haul.