Once you have purchased property for rental purposes or made any specific repairs and infrastructure replacements such as carpeting, painting, or replacing the HVAC unit, it is time to get the property rented.
This is about the time when you have to decide whether you will self-manage or use rental management in South Bay CA. There are pros and cons to both; let’s have a look:
Pros of self-management:
When you manage the property yourself, it allows you to keep a careful eye on the tenants, keep them well serviced, maintain good tenant/landlord relations, and watch the property closely. As well as tenant relations, managing it yourself will save you a fee of around eight percent per annum and increase the chances of keeping it fully occupied by the same tenant longer.
As the owner, you have the greatest incentive to keep it rented and to maintain the same tenants for years if possible. If it does become empty, you will do everything you can to fill it quickly and save yourself up to a month’s rent as commission.
This all sounds great, but managing rental property is also a great deal of work.
Cons of self-management:
The cons can be put in a nutshell. You must rent to quality tenants, provide monthly routine management, and deal with the more serious issues that emerge.
- The most time-consuming part of having an income property is renting it. You will have to place advertisements, make attractive signs, make appointments that are often not kept, reply to many email inquiries, and post the vacancy on the Internet.
- As well as waiting for people who never show up, you are going to have to pre-screen them for acceptance. In doing this, you will have to run a credit check and a check for a criminal background, neither of which are easy to accomplish. You will have to analyze employment records, wage history, and current debt. All of this must be done without breaking any laws pertaining to discrimination. And after all this, will you really be sure they will be a responsible tenant?
- Once you have made your choice of tenant, you have to prepare the lease, negotiate the terms, review the lease with the tenant, and then reverse the process when the tenant leaves to resolve any repairs and the security deposit.
The potential problems start when the tenant is in place. The maintenance and repair are an ongoing issue. You will have to make routine visits to the property and look inside and out for any potential maintenance issues or problems demanding immediate repair, while being ready to take corrective action if the tenant fails to pay the rent.
The problems associated with managing a rental property are time consuming and take certain flair to handle successfully. To overcome these problems, consider using professional rental management in South Bay CA. They can be found at Real Property Management – Titanium, South Bay. Call them in San Diego at 619-344-0888.
