Today I wanted to bring you an basic article on property management for the beginning real estate investor. One of the first questions every real estate investor has to answer immediately after purchase is should I hire property management or should I manage it myself? Every new real estate investor should learn how to manage their own property, even if they ultimately decide not to. By providing your own property management you will really learn and understand the business, the challenges each property faces, and learn how to watch over to professional property management if you decide to ultimately go that route.
There are a few things that are not mentioned in this article that are also extremely important in managing your own real estate or having it managed by a third party property management company. You need to make sure you have strong financing accounting of your properties. You need to know where you are financially each and every month. You also need to have a plan in place to provide maintenance and keep up your property physically. Third, you need to have a marketing plan in place so that you can keep your property full.
Every beginning real estate investor should start small and we highly recommend managing your own real estate properties at first. Once you understand how real estate operates and how to manage it effectively, you can hire and watch over a third party property management.
Happy Investing!
Spencer
Property Management: Managing Your Own Real Estate
By Alfred Ardis
Can you handle your own real estate properties? Do you have the time to be in charge of the property management of each one? Before you turn them over to a professional property management company, consider trying to take care of it on your own. If you plan well and stay organized, you have the ability to save a considerable amount of money each month and stay up-to-date on exactly how things are going.
Getting Organized
As you acquire real estate, you can be sure that the amount of paperwork that you come into contact with will increase as well. Make a folder for each of the properties and save all paperwork until you are positive that it is no longer valuable. Because many of your expenses are going to be tax deductible, make sure that you keep things arranged so that your tax professional will be able to find the applicable receipts and documentation. Each property should have a separate lease and you want to make sure that you keep separate accounting for each one. The more real estate you have, the more effort it will take to keep track of everything.
Being Available
Things happen and tenants will need to get in touch with you. They will need to know where to send the rent checks each month. They will need to have a number to call in case of an emergency. It is important that you be available as much as possible. If there is an emergency, you want to know about it sooner rather than later so that you can do something about it as soon as possible.
Some individuals have a separate phone number and a separate post office box for their real estate properties. It helps keep things separate and helps to ensure that they are able to handle all of the communication and financial paperwork. If you plan to go on vacation or be unavailable for an extended amount of time, make sure that you have someone handling things for you.
Keep Learning New Things
Once you have a system in place that works for you, you can still make improvements. If you want to learn more about real estate, consider taking some classes or working with a local professional. You can find out whether or not you can afford to take on another property or you can double check the way that you are doing things to make sure that you are getting the most out of the opportunity.
If, at any time, you find that you cannot handle the workload that the properties create, you can turn everything over to a property management company and allow them to take over all of the hard work.
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