Although managing your rental property yourself may sounds somewhat prudent as an investor, there are several factors, however, that make hiring a property manager a better alternative. You need to ask yourself some critical questions so as to determine which option is better in your case. Your objective analysis of such questions will help you make an informed and better option that will help you to maximize the return on investment from your property.
If you’re still considering how to arrive at the option that will work better for you between hiring a property manager and managing your property yourself, the following set of questions will serve as a guide. Of course, individual investment situations are unique. These questions are designed to help you choose the option that will work better in your case.
1. How close are you to your rental property?
The distance of your place of usual residence to your rental property is very important in deciding whether you should hire a property manager or not. If your residence is close to the rental property, it gives you the opportunity to visit the property frequently. Hence, you will be able to handle the maintenance, inspections, collections, and other necessities yourself. However, if your residence is far away from the property, you will incur a higher travel expenses and wastes enormous time visiting on a regular basis. You need to ask yourself if you can handle the expenses and the demand on your time so you won’t be tempted to reduce your visiting frequency. Think of how feasible it is, and if you can actually respond to mid-night emergencies. If you believe it is going to affect your productivity, it’s high time you consider hiring DoryAngel Property management to help lift the burden off your shoulder.
2. How well can you handle stress? How tolerant are you?
Property management is highly tasking. In fact, the challenges can push you off your limits a number of times no matter how tolerant you may think you are. Managing property goes beyond the simple task of collecting rent, monitoring and maintaining rental property, other unforeseen challenges may pop-up. Reacting to some of the unpredictable stress situations can put you under unnecessary pressure and push you beyond your limits. So, to address this question on stress, ask yourself what your reaction would be peradventure the following scenarios arise.
Disputes between tenants or neighbors.
Cases of domestic violence on your property.
Issues of illegal activities or business.
Sub-letting your property to other persons.
A tenant deciding to sue you
Trash the property
Violation of the HOA regulations.
Refusal to pay rent
DoryAngel Property managers are professionals and they can help you to handle all challenges without much difficulty, thereby relieving you of the troubles.
3. How currently overwhelmed are you with your property(s)?
Rental properties are attention demanding and managing them can be overwhelming even if you are an experienced investor. If you’re not careful, other important aspects of your life might be affected negatively and your productivity might start to diminish. So, hiring DoryAngel property managers could serve as a better approach at gaining control over your property(s) and maintaining a stable lifestyle.
4. How many rental properties do you have? Do you have the capacity to handle them all?
It might be easy for you to handle one or two properties, but once your portfolio starts to grow bigger, it becomes more challenging for you to go on without things falling apart. The truth is if you have many properties in your portfolio, you stand a chance to reap significant benefit when you leverage on the efficiencies of DoryAngel property management firm than doing it yourself. More also, having someone to manage your properties can help you to focus more on other things which can in turn help you to grow your portfolios in the long run.
5. Do you have sufficient experience in property maintenance and repairs?
Managing your rental property yourself requires an ardent knowledge of the building industry including regulations concerning maintenance and repairs. So, you need to have within your reach reliable handymen and contractors that can help you to fix any repair work that comes up. If you think handling this aspect will be too overwhelming for you, hiring a property management firm like DoryAngel who is well skilled at handling such situations may serve as a better option.
6. How long does it take to get your property rented?
Getting tenants to occupy your property can consume enormous amount of time and energy. You will need to put out some advert, make phone calls, and conduct inspections with prospective tenants so you won’t have the property vacant for too long. DoryAngel property management firm will definitely lift all these troubles off your shoulder and you also stand a chance to enjoy better profit margin since your property may record low vacancy rate.
7. How efficient are you at handling accounting and keeping records?
If you are not proficient at keeping records and calculating some profit and loss accounting statements for the purpose of tax deductions and other financial purposes, you may need a better hand. This is one of the obvious reasons you may want to consider hiring a DoryAngel property manager so you won’t be at the wrong side of the law.
8. Are you available 24/7/365 in case of an emergency?
This might sounds simple but it requires your honest response. This is because emergency is not a respecter of your other obligations. You can receive a call at the middle of an event, meeting, vacation, or at the middle of the night to attend to an emergency situation. If you’re not prepared to handle such emergency situations, then DoryAngel property management firm might be a better alternative for you.
9. Do you have the guts to evict a tenant due to late payments or other unruly reasons?
Managing tenants could be problematic if you don’t have the strong emotion requires to withstand the different excuses they will always come up with regarding late payments. You’re not running a charity organization, hence you must be confrontational if don’t want to be taking advantage of as the understanding landlord, then hiring a property management company like DoryAngel might serve you better compared to doing it yourself.
10. How grounded are you about laws governing property ownership?
If you are not familiar with issues concerning property management, you might find yourself in frequent legal battles. Frequent lawsuits can eat deep into your profit margin and affect your investment negatively. So, if you want to prevent legal liability and ensure huge return on your investment, hiring a property manager will be a wise option for you.
Final verdict
If at the end of this exercise, you cannot give a yes response to over 5 of the questions, then you will do yourself a great favor by hiring DoryAngel property management to handle your property(s) on your behalf.