Property management can be both financially and emotionally rewarding. It feels good to provide a safe, welcoming environment for families. Rental properties can be an excellent investment if properly managed. Unfortunately, property managers face numerous challenges, particularly those who manage multi-family buildings or portfolios with multiple properties.
Rental property is becoming more competitive as investors flock to a growing market. Between 2005 and 2015, the number of rental households increased by 9 million. Whether you are an individual, a member of an agency, or a property owner who wants to manage their own properties, it is critical to understand these obstacles and how to overcome them. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the top eight issues for property managers. Examine it out!
What are Property Managers Pain Points in 2022?
Maintenance and Repairs
Unquestionably at the top of the list for most property managers. Repairs and maintenance are critical to maintaining the value of your properties and keeping your tenants satisfied. Ignoring necessary repairs is the quickest way to force a good tenant to leave.
Unfortunately, repairs and maintenance consume more than 10% of your monthly rental income. They also squander precious time. Property managers are required to find contractors, plan a maintenance schedule, and supervise work as needed. Fortunately, apps and services can make organizing and managing repairs and maintenance much easier. Property managers must be aware of time-saving tools that can benefit both them and their clients.
Retention of Tenants
Retaining tenants, especially good ones, is becoming increasingly difficult in today’s competitive rental market. In 2017, 37% of buyers bought to rent, and with the rental market expected to grow, many more investors are expected to enter the rental market. This is good news for property managers, but it also means that tenants will have more options.
Tenants are also more discerning than ever before thanks to advances in technology. Tenants today are constantly exposed to newer and better rental options because they have access to a vast amount of information. Keeping your best tenants is no longer an easy task. Property managers must be aware of trends and provide exceptional service or risk losing their clients.
Insufficient Time
Property managers’ time is not only consumed by repairs and maintenance. Property managers are kept very busy by processing service requests, managing rental payments, contracting, and other responsibilities. For those who manage multiple properties on their own, this can quickly become a situation in which important things are overlooked, resulting in unhappy tenants.
Tenant retention, as previously stated, should always be a top priority for property managers. Making time for your tenants is an important part of making them feel valued, and this requires good time management. It is critical for busy property managers to hire people they can rely on to handle minor tasks and to use technology to improve service delivery.
Service Request Management
Service requests can consume a significant amount of time. This is especially true for property managers who manage large multi-family complexes or multiple houses. Tenants must be contacted, contractors must be sourced, scheduled, and paid, and everything must be tracked and recorded.
Failure to promptly resolve service requests is also one of the most common tenant complaints, so property managers must have a quick, effective system in place. The last thing you want is for your tenants to feel ignored because their request slipped through the cracks of a poor request management system.
Management of Reputation
Tenants today have high expectations of their rental properties. They have access to a wealth of information and are willing to do the necessary research to ensure they get the right one. Tenants can now share their experiences with one another more easily than ever before thanks to apps and websites. This is fantastic news for good landlords and property managers, as well as for the business as a whole.
However, it also means that property managers must be aware of their online reputation and respond quickly to complaints from both current and past tenants. With a property manager’s busy schedule, managing your online reputation can easily be overlooked. It may be worthwhile to investigate reputation management services to ensure that current and prospective residents feel heard online.
Recruiting Contractors
Whether you have an in-house maintenance team or not, as a property manager, you will inevitably need to hire specialized contractors at some point. If you are purchasing a property in a new area, this can be a major headache. You must not only find a contractor for each job, but you may have to find several before finding one who is a good fit.
Furthermore, you have no way of knowing if you are being charged a fair rate and must rely on contractors to be fair and honest with you. As a result, more and more property managers are turning to apps like ChoreRelief to make the process easier and more efficient. By submitting work to a marketplace of pre-screened professionals. You can rest assured that you will always receive the best work at the best price.
Choosing the Best Tenants
You must first find your best tenants before you can worry about retaining them. Because not everyone makes a good tenant, all prospective tenants must be screened. The traditional method of vetting tenants, which relies on credit checks and bank statements, only tells you if they can pay rent, not if they are obnoxious, loud, or disrespectful of other tenants or shared spaces.
Nothing is worse than a bad tenant. Regrettably, they are easier to get into than they are to get out of. Thankfully though, there are a growing number of options for landlords and property managers to lookup tenant histories. These websites and apps allow you to ensure that not only are they able to pay, but that they will not cause any other problems.
Rent Collection
When you think of rent collection as a pain point, you probably think of people not paying their rent or paying late. While that is an issue, the process of collecting and processing rent payments can be extremely time consuming. This is especially true if you are using an old system or, worse, collecting actual checks!
Fortunately, this is one of the simplest problems on the list. Chasing tenants to collect rent checks and deposit them at the bank has become obsolete. Property managers have many excellent options for automating rent collection. Tenants can pay online through services, saving both you and them time and effort.
Finally, good property management is all about finding the right tenants, keeping them happy, and keeping your costs to a minimum. While it may appear simple, as demonstrated above, there are numerous small obstacles that can quickly snowball. The simplest thing property managers can do to start alleviating these pain points is to use technology to automate and manage their operations.
There are numerous solutions available that address these issues so that you do not have to. So, instead of working hard, start working smart. The less time you spend on each of these issues, the more time you have to focus on keeping your tenants satisfied and maximizing ROI for you and your clients.