If you own rental property, ask yourself these questions:
- Are you forced to keep up with the ever-changing fair housing laws and other legislation regarding tenancy, including lead-based paint policies?
- Are you concerned about the possibility of a tenant suing you...and winning?
- Do you have to deal with the collection of rents, late payments, and bounced checks?
- Do you dread confrontation with tenants, trying to convince them to take care of the property better or start paying their rent on time?
- Do you cross your fingers, hoping that you won't have to deal with the move-out / advertising / move-in process that occurs between tenants?
- Do you struggle with the process of advertising and showing your vacant home, interviewing tenants, taking applications, and running credit and background checks?
- Do you sometimes feel that you spend all of your time collecting checks, paying vendors, and performing all of the accounting necessary on your rental?
Here are some of the things we do for you:
- Keep on top of regional, state, and federal landlord/tenant law and legislative issues facing property owners and tenants.
- Track vacancy rates, vacancy factors, time-on- market, and rent values for the area, and effectively market your home with print and the Internet.
- Create and maintain relationships with qualified vendors, including painters, roofers, electricians, plumbers, appliance repairmen, handymen, and more.
- Provide appropriate rental applications and forms that, along with a consistent screening process, ensure the highest quality tenants while conforming to all applicable laws.
- Provide a lease agreement that covers your property well, collect and account for rents, and confront tenants to enforce the terms of the lease.
- Perform complete accounting for your property, to ensure a maximum return on your investment and optimum tax benefit.
This sets us apart from other property management companies:
- Personalized, attentive service with thorough communication.
- Expert knowledge of the industry and local real estate market.
- Experience dealing with all kinds of property and tenancy issues.
- Established relationships with local services providers of all types.
1. Why should I use a professional to manage my home?While the reasons our clients choose professional management vary, here are some of the key reasons many people elect professional management over self-management:
- We handle maintenance and emergency repairs, allowing you to sleep at night.
- We enforce collection of rents and serve the proper notices upon failure to pay.
- We understand and apply the correct federal, state, and local laws, keeping you and your investment out of trouble.
- We know the local market, have an extensive network of contacts, and have advertising resources available to us at discounted rates. This allows us to effectively market your vacant home to prospective residents to get it filled.
2. Can I choose to disallow pets, smokers, large families, etc.?
We comply fully with the Fair Housing Act. This means that you can not choose to disallow anyone that is a member of a protected class under the act. You can choose to disallow pets and not permit smoking in your home, but you cannot deny a service animal. If you have additional questions on the specifics of the Fair Housing Act, please click
HERE
to view the Federal Fair Housing guidelines
3. Do you provide me with a report of activity on my property?
Yes, we will provide you a monthly report of rent and other income received, and maintenance, repairs, and other expenses incurred. This will be provided once per month. If you have questions regarding your statement, please do not hesitate to contact us.
We believe in a preventive approach to rental property maintenance. No one likes to spend money on repairs, but by proactively discovering and addressing mainteanance issues while they are small, we keep the costs down as low as possible. Our plan for staying on top of maintenance issues consists of the following:
- Seasonal maintenance programs for keeping the furnace and air conditioning systems working properly and keeping gutters cleaned out to prevent roof leaks
- We encourage tenants to report all maintenance issues immediately upon their discovery while they are still small
- Every repair technician we send to the property is instructed to spend a few extra minutes talking to the tenant and walking through the house to identify potential future problems and report them for consideration
- We provide home inspection packages to our clients where we annually inspect every mechanical feature in the home and report on it's condition and make recommendations for it's continued upkeep
We know that a solid preventive maintenance program, when properly implemented, will improve the long term returns of owning rental property. Not only will it avoid some of the high-cost major repairs that come from deferred maintenance, but a well maintained home attracts a better tenant - meaning your property will typically rent more quickly, for a higher price, and will stay rented longer than would otherwise be the case.