Property Management How-To - Are You The Right Person To Manage A Rental Property?
Property management is a tough business and one I do not ever recommend getting into unless you have a good reason to. Maintenance issues, evictions, bed bugs, dog fighting rings; we have seen it all and it can break a person who is not properly prepared for it. While it is a difficult business, there are some times where I do recommend managing your own rental property.
When You Should Manage Your Own Building Property
It’s Your First Property - It’s always good to get to know your first property and how it works mechanically, identifying problem areas like what happens when it rains a lot etc. Managing your first investment property is good too in that you learn about people as well, and managing tenant relationships can be challenging.
You have scaled large enough to have it make sense for you to bring management in-house as a service, to do it more efficiently than outsourcing.
You are curious and you like solving problems.
You are crazy and enjoy pain.
Times That I Do NOT Recommend Managing Your Own Buildings:
Your investment is more than 30 miles away (maybe even closer).
You have more than 5 units but less than 25 (my opinion here could be swayed).
You do not like people or fixing things.
You are too nice and let people walk all over you.
You are too mean and threaten violence for every infraction or late rent payment.
Hiring the right property manager is important but it can make or break your investment, so stay tuned for a future article from me where I'll go more in depth on that subject.
