As the old adage goes, "time is money." And being a property manager can get really busy!
You have to attract tenants to rent vacant units, maintain several properties, learn ever-changing real estate laws and keep your business organized.
When you take the time take a few extra necessary measures, you can avoid having to open the medicine cabinet to reach for the ibuprofen to relieve your aching property management headaches.
Applying smart property management tips will enable you to streamline and scale your business, turning you into an effective and efficient property manager.
You've got a lot of responsibility to handle: renting units, hiring and overseeing contractors and convincing your property owners you're worth their investment. You might as well be as efficient as possible.
Without further delay, here are seven property management tips to make more money and make your life easier whether you are a beginning property manager or a seasoned veteran.
7 Property Management Tips That Save Time and Money
These seven tips will help your property management and real estate rental business.
1. Properly Screen Tenants
Nothing zaps your energy more than a problematic tenant. A renter who won't pay, one who makes a lot of noise or disrespects other tenants in your building can cause more vacancies and more headaches.
A difficult tenant can delay your progress and take up unnecessary time that could have been avoided with better screening. Beyond the typical background check, make sure to call those landlord and employer references.
2. Document Everything
As a property manager, it's essential to document all your interactions from tenant communications to contractor issues and much more. But documenting should never be vague. Ensure you put in the details.
Never use general statements. Always be as specific as possible. Use the precise wording of the party so you can quote them accurately. Especially if you need to enter into litigation in the future.
For contractor and maintenance issues, you'll need to document the amount of time you spend on every part of the project as well as the entire scope of the project.
Here are some examples:
- How much time you took to set up listings
- How many hours you spent answering calls
- How much time it took to compose and send electronic communications
- Total of hours real estate showings took to complete
This documentation is one of the best property management tips in time management and having to provide evidence should the need arise.
3. Choose an Effective System for Recording Notes
How many times have you gotten off the phone with important information of something you needed to attend to and then you were interrupted with an emergency and forgot the details of the telephone conversation?
It's happened to most of us.
You can't remember it for the life of you and you need to make another call and get embarrassed.
You need an effective recording system you can go back to. You can jot down your notes on Evernote, Google or a system from a reputable property management software company.
By adding your notes to your calendar, when the day comes to a close, you'll have all your information in one place.
Finding a good place to record your notes makes this one of the best property management tips and avoids digging through post-its on your desk to find what you need in a hurry.
You can also use the same note-taking system to write cliff notes on an analysis of the real estate market.
4. Batch Similar Tasks Into Time Blocks
Multitasking isn't always a good thing. In fact, we should only do one thing at a time. And when you try to do more things can get messy. When we try to do everything at once we spend unnecessary time having to fix our mistakes.
Do your rental listings at the same time by scheduling them into one block. This will help you streamline the process and make your workflow easier.
5. Screen Tenants with a Questionnaire
It's no secret that screening tenants are time-consuming for property managers. It's one of the biggest time sucks of the position is eliminating unqualified tenants by sending multiple emails and calls.
Although you take the time to list the criteria you're looking for in a tenant, many tenants don't even read through your advertisements.
If the criteria aren't at the top of your listing, it's less likely a prospective tenant will even read your tenant qualifications.
For example, if you're looking for a minimum or maximum salary requirement for a building you manage, a prospective tenant will often overlook it.
A successful property manager knows to add a survey to the rental listing that requires potential tenants to complete.
6. Hold Regular Team Meetings
To keep your staff on the same page, schedule staff meetings. Each team member will be clear on their duties for the day or week, and if they're not they can ask questions.
Whether it's a brief meeting on Skype or Google Hangouts or a conference call, staff meetings are one of the smartest property management tips to keep your organization running smoothly.
7. Outsource Small Tasks
Once you do the tasks that require expertise, you can hire outside help to do other duties.
There's no reason you can't hire a live chat operator or virtual assistant to answer questions that come in on your website at the same time you are showing units or screening tenants.
7 Property Management Tips to Save you Time and Money
Now you know seven property management tips to help you manage your business more efficiently.
Putting them into practice can increase revenue, save time and make you a property management leader.
Want to know how to burglar-proof the property you're managing? Check out more of our posts on property management and home security.
