Do I Need to Hire a Property Management Company?

Ever wondered if it’s worth hiring a property management company? Whether you have one property or twenty, handling the admin associated with letting out your properties is time-consuming and can feel like hard work. Using property management companies helps make things easier.

What is a property management company?

A property management company is a third party contracted to oversee the daily running of your property. They typically deal directly with your tenants and look after the day-to-day running of your properties such as maintenance, repairs and general upkeep.

Property management companies may offer a range of options such as:

  • Tenant find only – here they advertise your property and help you through the letting process with referencing, guarantor checks and tenancy agreements.
  • Rent collection – as well as helping you find a tenant, the property management company will help you by collecting rent, looking after inventories and renewing tenancies if appropriate.
  • Fully managed – in this situation, the property management company finds tenants, collects their rent and will look after the ongoing upkeep of your property. For example, they will ensure your gas safe certificate is up to date, will organise replacement keys if you tenants happen to lose theirs and will co-ordinate repairs and general maintenance.

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Do I Need to Hire a Property Management Company?

How much does it cost to hire property management companies?

Property management companies tend to charge a percentage of the rental income. As you might expect, they charge less for a basic ‘tenant find’ service and more for fully managing your property.

What are the benefits of hiring a property management company?

Managing a property can be disruptive. Even the quietest, most reasonable tenants will occasionally have problems they need your help with. From broken boilers to lost doorkeys, it’s the landlord they get in touch with, unless of course, you work with a property management company. And that’s the main benefit of hiring property management companies – they remove the work involved with letting properties. This can be especially attractive if you are new to letting a property, if you work full time or are away a lot, or if you have commitments which limit your flexibility such as young children or elderly relatives who need your care.

 

Not sure whether you need to hire a property management company?

Here are some things to consider:

How far do you live from your property/properties?

If you’re in the same town, you’ll be able to get to your property easily when needed. If you’re more than 30-minutes away by car or rely on public transport, “popping over” starts to become more difficult.

How many properties do you have?

Savvy landlords know that there are economies of scale and ways to save time by aligning activities. However, the more properties you have, the more time-consuming and disruptive it can be to manage your own property portfolio. For this reason, hiring a property management company can make good sense.

How much spare time do you have?

If you are retired, self-employed or don’t work, it may make sense to manage your properties by yourself. However, if you work full time or travel a lot, it could make more sense to hire a property management company. They’ll look after everything for you, so you don’t get disrupted by emergency calls or having to chase up late rent payments.

What condition is your property in?

Older properties tend to need more work and have more problems. So, unless you’ve completely renovated your property, it’s likely your tenants will have occasional issues such as damp, broken heating/no hot water or faulty white goods. In this situation, it can make more sense to invest in a property management company as they will have the time and the contacts to deal with the problems that crop up.

How hands-on are you?

Some people love nothing more than rolling up their sleeves and tackling broken boilers, blocked gutters and fence panels that blew down in a storm. Others can think of nothing worse. If you’re one of the latter, you’ll either want a little black book of very reliable and trustworthy tradespeople who are also easily available, or you can hire a property management company. Working with a property management company relieves you of all the problems associated with letting out a property, saving you a whole lot of hassle.

What are your finances like?

Hiring a property management company reduces your rental income. For this reason, if you rely on your rental properties to provide an income, you may prefer to look after your property and tenants yourself. If however, your property/properties are an investment, you may see the cost of hiring a property management company as part of the investment price, leaving you to get on with everything else you have on.

Interested in finding out more about using a property management company?

As well as being an award-winning lettings agent, The Home Club takes a flexible approach to property management – let us know what you want and we’ll do what we can to help.

Find out more by dropping us a line on 01483 608 875 or info@thehomeclub.com.

Thank you for reading our blog “Do I need to hire a property management company?”. 

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