All Seasons Blog

Should you manage your own rental property? Answer these 7 questions to find out.

Matt Rogers - Friday, December 14, 2018

When you decide to rent out a home, you might decide to manage your property yourself to save money, or to keep control of the entire process. Understandably, it can be overwhelming to get started. If this is the case for you, you might want to hire a Property Manager. What should you do? Here are 7 questions to ask yourself to see if you should manage your own rental property.

1. How many rental properties do you have or want to have?

Do you have one property, or do you want to get into the investment property business? The more properties you have, the more maintenance issues will occur, causing you to have to travel or send a vendor from property to property. You’ll also have to deal with managing the collection of rents, tenant applications, security deposits, and miscellaneous tenant issues for multiple properties. If this sounds like too much for you to handle, hire a Property Manager.

Even if you are starting with just one property, hiring a Property Manager like All Seasons with your first property makes sense. All Seasons can help you buy your next property, focusing on potential for return on investment, making the expansion of your investment property business go smoothly.

2. How far do you live from your rental property?

If your rental home is in Colorado Springs and you are in Afghanistan, hiring a Property Manager is a no-brainer. The same goes for if you’re located in a different city or state. A local Property Manager knows the right vendors to choose to work on your property and will be able to deal with tenants in person. Having a representative physically set eyes on the property is so key.

3. How often can your budget handle vacancies?

Vacancies in your rental property can kill profits fast. You need to be able to anticipate vacancies and be showing your property before your current tenants even leave. That means you need to be able to meet prospective tenants at their convenience, while making sure your current tenants know you’ll be there. This takes coordination, phone time, and the ability to run to your property at all times of the day.

If you can’t do this because you have a day job, you will end up with vacancies. A Property Manager will make sure your property has a tenant. They’ll price your property correctly for the market and are on top of lease timing. An experienced Property Management company that knows the local market will give you the best chance of avoiding vacancies.

4. How much time can you devote to your property?

Let’s just be honest about this. If you have a regular job, it will be hard to find the time to devote to your investment property. It just makes sense to hire a Property Management company to do it for you. With a Property Manager, your property IS their priority, so you can rest easy that the rental management is under control.

5. How good are you with people?

Imagine your phone ringing at all times of the day and night with complaints, lease questions, and maintenance requests (or demands). Tenants get emotional about their home. They want problems fixed immediately. Wouldn’t you?

A professional Property Management company like All Seasons is very experienced in tenant relations. They’ll take those midnight calls and know the right people to send out to take care of the problems. They also have processes and systems in place to ensure tenant's questions and requests are attended to post haste.

6. How much legal experience do you have?

Are you confident with "store bought" leases covering you? Do you know what paperwork should be completed in the instance of a roommate coming off of a lease? Now imagine serving an eviction notice on a family. Is that something you will feel comfortable doing?

If this doesn’t sound like a day well spent to you, hire a Property Manager like All Seasons. They have relationships with real estate attorneys that know the business, utilize a very extensive lease with supporting addenda, and handle problems like evictions in those rare instances they come up.

7. How much experience do you have in Property Management?

If you’ve never managed a rental property, learning as you go can be a frustrating and expensive process. If you're not doing things correctly, you could even end up in legal trouble! Hiring a good Property Manager right away can not only save you money but make the whole thing so easy you have time to buy more properties and expand your investment business. A Property Management firm like All Seasons, LLC CRMC that also can help you buy and sell real estate is a perfect partner for your investment property business.

No, not every rental property owner needs to hire a Property Manager but most people don’t have the necessary knowledge to handle all the different parts of the business that need to be done: maintaining the property, screening tenants, avoiding vacancies, communicating with the tenants, sending out vendors, collecting rent, and making sure everything is legal.

To see all the services All Seasons LLC, CRMC has to offer, including details on how they focus on preventative measures to best maintain your investment, go to: https://www.all-seasons.com/colorado-springs-property-management or call us today at: (719) 632-3368. Why wait? We can help you rent your home in Colorado Springs today!