People seem to be very focused on the % of management. The whole picture should be looked at.
I think preparing a lease should be part of the letting and management! Is it possible to let and manage a property if they don’t prepare a lease? No! So why is there an extra charge for it? What does the letting fee actually involve if it does not include lease preparation?
I would also ask if they charge extra to represent you at a tribunal hearing if needed? Do they charge extra for insurance claims? Do they do ongoing inspections of the property? Is there a charge? How do they handlle rent arrears?
To me all these are more important than comparing one or 2 percent in management fees!!!

Here is a list of questions you should be asking the property manager:
http://www.adprop.com.au/cgi-bin/page.cgi?id=288
It is for SA and we don’t work in NSW but you can get an idea and adjust it to suit!

Also, If you wan’t to compare our fee schedule again just as a comparison, please download it from the web site or email me if you have trouble finind it. [email protected]!

All the best [biggrin]

Investment Property Management
http://www.adprop.com.au

Peter please be careful with these offers, developers don’t usually provide rental garantees because of confidence in the rental market, they provide them because they are trying to sell a property based on gross rental yield. If they increase the rent, they increase the sale price. The money they make in the inflated sales price overrides what they need to pay into it to meet the rental guarantee!

The bottom line is that these properties are sold to investors for an inflated sales price!!! Check the median in the area and get an INDEPENDENT valuation before you purchase.

I would be happy to give you a rental appraisal on any property you want to purchase, that is looking at the likely rents in the area based on historical statistics not speculation! That way you would be able to know how inflated the rental guarantee is as well

Investment Property Management
http://www.adprop.com.au

A huge amount of time to me is more important than a sum of money.

I will call myself “rich” when I have time to do what I want to do with enough mony coming in from investments to support my lifestyle.

I gave up working for a salary at 33, I now run my own business and invest in property, again that is “work” that requires my time so not quite rich yet [blush2]

Investment Property Management
http://www.adprop.com.au

Christies Beach is great as an investment.
The government now is threatening to abolish rent assistance in SA, that will effect rents in lower socioeconomic areas and I suspect rent arrears will be increased in those areas as a result. Both far North and far south areas may be effected.

I have a newsletter with the top 10 suburbs in Adelaide. Email me if you want a copy [email protected]
(no private messages please it may take me months to visit this site again and respond to them

Investment Property Management
http://www.adprop.com.au

I can recomend the prosper group from NSW, they are defiantely not free but worth their weigh in gold.

When if comes to information, you get what you pay for, if you want it free you get cheap advice!

Investment Property Management
http://www.adprop.com.au

Please be careful with land agent’s legislation in your state, know the laws.

It is not legal to ask for or accept a commission for any real estate transaction if you do not have a land agent’s license.

I know people do it and it is OK until you get caught (just like anything else that is illegal). The implications are paying back any money’s you recieved for the transaction and in SA at least there is a $20,000 fine on top just for attempting it!

Investment Property Management
http://www.adprop.com.au

complaining to anyone is not proactive, it will not make an disorganised person more organised, it will just aggrevate them even more then you will be labelled as a difficult to deal with client.

You need to find another property manager, be part of the solution don’t add to the problem.

You should be recieving monthly statements of rental income, what does she mean by no time to go to the bank? Tenants should be paying into the agencies trust account.

Sounds like your property is very missmanaged, you need to find someone that is capable of managing it properly.

Investment Property Management
http://www.adprop.com.au

Hi FL,
here is a link to some questions you should be asking, it is based on SA but you can adjust them to suit!

http://www.adprop.com.au/cgi-bin/page.cgi?id=288

Some things to keep in mind just from my own experience.
Cheap management fees do not mean that you are saving money!

We recently listed a property previously managed by a name brand agency, their management fees were 7% ours are 9%
They had the property rented for $180 per week, it’s true market rent is $230 per week and it had no rent increases for 3 years (it is easy for the pm’s to rent it at $180). We have put the rent up right away to $210 with a further increase to $230 in 6 months (so that we don’t shock the tenant too much)

There was another property we recently took over with a landlord that had all his properties on periodic agreements!
management fees were 7% (again). His pm was charging him a 2 week letting fee every time they renewed the lease for the same tenant!!!! He let the tenancy expire to save money.

They should not be charging anything to renew leases for the same tenant!!!!

Letting a clients lease expire means that he was also paying landlords insurance for nothing, if he had tried to claim rent arrears, most landlords policies would not honour the claim unless a written fixed term lease was in place! He was not even advised this by the previous agent!

There were 3 properties taken over this month by us with NO leases in place, there was a verbal agreement between the pm and the tenant! These were all from big franchise agencies!

If I can cauthion you about one thing, that is to find a company that has a primary focus on property management and it is not just a side branch to the main sales department.

Recently, I heared this from a principal of one franchise!

“95% of properties we have in our rent roll are dogs, they are not earning money for the business and the only way we can covert them to a profit is to encourage the landlords to sell”

Getting a sales commission from your rental properties is more important to most agencies than managing them, that is the only reason why they have it there! Please be very careful!!!!

Investment Property Management
http://www.adprop.com.au

Yes, I agree compared to other forums like somersoft which I believe have even more traffic than this site, this is definately painfully slow.

Any reason why??????

Also, it would be helpful to get a QUICK preview of what the post is about by running a cursor over it instead of having to click on it and waiting 10 years for it to load up.

Investment Property Management
http://www.adprop.com.au

Has she shown an interest in investing in property? If so, that’s a good start!!!

Investment Property Management
http://www.adprop.com.au