For most landlords, this is a side gig so they tend to take on everything themselves.  This includes everything from maintenance to driving over to collect the rent.  There are many components to efficiently managing your property investment and unfortunately when you are already spread too thin.

Managing a property is not cheap. DIY landlords often think they will save money by doing it all instead of hiring a property management company to handle everything. Unfortunately, we often see these property owners struggle financially as they fail to estimate expenses correctly. If you are dealing with some of the common problems, contact RentPro Management today for more information on how to avoid these issues.

Over-estimating rent rates can be a complete disaster. Most landlords will buy rental properties hoping it will allow them to have income for life or a second income. However, after investing money into renovating a property and trying to find tenants, and failing, some landlords end up with massive amounts of debt and no prospects to help them out of it. Renovations do help to make a property look great, but it isn’t going to be enough to help you bring in the right tenants. You need to know what to charge based on the economy and the area you are trying to rent to people. One way to find out what to charge is to take a look at Craigslist and see what other people are charging for similar properties. Gaining this insight will help you see if you are in-line with other properties on the market.

Let’s face it, we all want the resident to move-in, pay their rent on time, report legitimate maintenance needs, clean and care for the property and move out in accordance with their lease with the property looking better than when they moved in.   However, we need to document not only property condition but virtually all transactions and communications in case there is any variation from the perfect scenario.  Periodic property condition reports (including move-in and move-out) that include photographs or video and notes will not only document the condition of the property at that time but can also help identify unreported maintenance needs.  Resident rent payments should be documented on a resident ledger showing when rents are paid each month along with corresponding charges such as late fees, NSF charges or other lease related payments.  All correspondence with the resident should be documented including application screening and decision criteria, phone calls, email and snail mail communications.  Maintenance records showing when work was requested, what work was done and when work was completed.  Maintaining good records and documentation will enable the rental investor to navigate through challenges that may occur.

When should you evict someone? This is a hard thing for new DIY landlords as they often try to be friends with the tenants initially instead of acting like a business transaction. While you do want to be friendly, you need to have boundaries. If you have someone in clear violation of the contract, you need to start the eviction process immediately. Failure to start the process early can leave you vulnerable to people that will not pay late fees and will continue to pay late month after month. Avoid getting into the habit of accepting partial payments, this only sets you up for failure and shows weakness to a renter that doesn’t have proper money management skills.