I relied on my property manager to take care of my
investment property but the agent’s ineffective approach ended up costing me
dearly.
I was 20 years old when I bought my first
investment property
The property generated a healthy return – but one
day, the rent just stopped coming in.
"I called up the property manager and she said ‘Oh,
that’s because there’s no money sitting in the account’,”
The manager only realised the tenants were in
arrears with their rent after I brought it to her attention.
It took the property manager so long to notice the
tenants were in arrears and even then, I was the one who had to hound her to do
anything about it
Despite my pressure on the property manager to
resolve this, the situation dragged on without a resolution. The manager
finally evicted the tenants. However, because the relationship with the tenant
had soured, the tenant left the property dirty and damaged.
"I wouldn’t say it was destroyed but it wasn’t
cleaned and there were marks all over the walls,”
It took me seven weeks to get another tenant into
the property, costing me several thousands of dollars in lost rental income. In
addition, I had to pay for the house to be cleaned and painted.
"I think all of that could have been avoided if I
had a property manager who was actually looking after my investment property
and managing it properly,”
Dissatisfied with the service, I decided to look
for a better property manager, but after a lot of work looking and yes there
are good ones, but be prepared to pay for quality.
In my search I came across online property
management software called RealRenta and to be honest no one is going
to look after or do a better job then you will. As no one will care as much as
you about your own investment property.
With technology today, there is not much that can’t
be done for you. RealRenta looks after all the tenant
payments, tracks the rent and sends out reminders when rent is not paid. Hell
it even sends out breach notices when rent is in arrears, all on time and to
legislation.
Tenants have their own portal and have access to
all their documents and rental ledgers etc. All communications are done through
the platform, so you don’t even have to deal with the tenant directly. You can
even send text (SMS) messages to your tenants from the platform. Tenant can
even put in maintenance requests and there is much more.
So I decided to give it a go and see how it went
and I have never looked back. I just sit back and RealRenta lets me
know if I need to do anything. Which to be honest is all a property manager
will do, well if they even know something is wrong or even care.
Overall, I believe investors need to spend time choosing
the right property management solution that will work best for them.
"I learned that you have to treat choosing a
property management solution like any investment and do your research. Never
just sit back and think the property manager is always going to do a good job
or even care about your property, because in the end it’s not their property
and they are not the ones that will lose thousands when things are not done right.
RealRenta has all the tools that a property manager has but for less than ¼ the cost of a property manager.
Join now and the cost is less than a cup of coffee a week to manage your rental property.
RealRenta also has a free vision, so why not check it out.
Jason Gwerder
Friday, 23 September 2016
