When you’re deciding whether to hire a professional property manager or do the management yourself, remember why you invested in property at all. Most people invest for cash flow benefits and tax benefits, but in addition to those reasons, you invested because you want to improve the condition your life. Maybe you want to improve your life currently, with regular cash flow, or maybe you’re thinking about your life in the future, and you know it makes a good investment.
There is a cost you must be willing to pay when you’re an investor. When you do it yourself, that cost becomes your time, and you have to decide how much you value your time. There are other things you could be doing with that time when you hire a property manager.
When you do your own management, there is less time you can spend with your family. That’s the trade-off. The same things need to be done whether you’re managing the home or someone else. For the property to perform, you’ll need to make it rent ready and go through the marketing process. You’ll need to manage the application process and find a tenant, you’ll need to lease it and then take care of all the ongoing maintenance issues that are required.
Managing on your own means you have to be available to go and fix the toilet and change the circuit breakers or deal with floods that are caused by the tenant when they stop up their drains. You are on call 24/7, and that prevents you from being able to do other things.
A professional property manager does that work for you. You will pay a fee to get your time back, but it may be well worth what you can do with that time. Choose a company that can assist you with acquiring a property. That way, even with the property management costs factored in, you’ll get a more significant return on your investment than you would if you were managing yourself with a different property.
If we can help you in any way, please contact us at ES Property Management.