Property Management Issues

I know some people like to self-manage, but for my money if i have a good property manager it’s worth paying them as they will check employment and other references initially. Another advantage is because the work they generate to tradespeople is substantial required work is normally done promptly. I have a block of flats and I estimate my time spent on these to be under 3 hours a year. The time saved means I can look at things like interest rates with refinancing etc or other investments. I make more profit from having a good PM than they charge me

We recently purchased an IP that was pretty sound but had been rather neglected. The biggest issue was that the vendor had left the place filthy with years of built up grime, garden neglected, junk piled up, fly screens torn etc. Nothing major – we spent about $200 and a lot of elbow grease to get the place up to scrath. And it really came up well. Unfortunately in our haste to get the placed rented ASAP we allowed the property manager to assess and advertise the house for rent prior to us undertaking the work. Also, despite our gut instinct we let the PM talk us into setting the rent at $165pw rather than $175pw. Result was we had several applicants within a couple of days of advertising and in light of how well the house came up, we definitely should have stuck to our guns and asked for $175pw which is more in line with the current market. Lessons learnt…1) present property to PM and potential tenants in the condition we intend to let it (or at least close to). 2) The easiest way for a PM to rent a property is to offer it below market value rent – good for them, bad for us, 3) listen to our gut instinct, 4) its our property, we call the shots, we should manage the PM not the other way around.

One good thing to come out of all this was that on moving in the tenant (who had only seen the house in its former state) was absolutely thrilled which I suppose creates a bit of goodwill towards us. And she’s been early with her rent so far!