If you’ve recently made a residential real estate investment, congratulations! With over one third of the country renting its homes nowadays, you’ve entered a sound market that people will always have a need for. The question is, how will you be administering your investment property effectively? Managing your property can be a full time job, so if you’re not interested in hands-on management, you might want to consider handing over the management of your residential real estate investment to a qualified real estate management company. This is especially true if any of the following criteria apply to you:
1. You own a lot of properties. To understand why managing multiple properties might be difficult, all you have to do is imagine juggling twenty or so tennis balls. The more house-shaped tennis balls you’re juggling, the more you’ll probably benefit from professional property management.
2. You don’t live near your properties. Unless you’re a one-person DIY dynamo who lives within five miles of all your properties and this is your full time job, your residential real estate investment will be better served by a management company. Let them deal with the 3AM calls about the plumbing being backed up or hounding people for late rent.
3. You don’t wish to act as a formal employer. There’s a reason the property management industry rakes in over 60 billion dollars a year, and a lot of it has to do with owners like you wanting to avoid the legal hassle of acting as an employer. If you hire building managers or other employees to help you with your investment, you’re going to have to deal with payroll considerations and other legal requirements that could take up a large portion of your time. However, a property management industry usually acts as an independent contractor and would thus free you up from “employer” status.
4. Your property is part of an affordable housing initiative. If you’re subject to rent control laws or provide housing that is paid for by vouches or other assistance programs, the legalities of managing your property can get extremely complicated and become a 24 hour a day job. Even worse, failure to abide by certain state and federal stipulations could result in loss of government money and substantial fines. In other words, there is a lot at stake in this situation, and it’s probably better to call in the professionals.