6 Tips to Make Property Management More Hands-Off
Owning a rental property requires hard work, and no matter what YouTube personalities say, it’s not exactly passive income. However, it is possible to reduce your workload with the following tips.
- Hire a professional property management company
Hands down, the best way to reduce your workload is to hire a professional. Managing your own rental properties seems like a good idea until you realize it takes all of your time and energy. Since you can’t control when you’ll need to respond to an emergency or deal with a difficult tenant, life can become unpredictable.
Working with a professional is a game-changer. A property management company will take over all of your landlord duties and take excellent care of your tenants. You won’t have to answer the phone at three in the morning or ditch dinner to rush around trying to schedule an emergency repair. It’s the best way to lighten your load. For instance, Round Rock property management services from Green Residential help Texas property investors remain as hands-off as possible. It’s the closest you’ll ever get to making your investments passive income.
- Use software
Software applications make tasks easier, more efficient, and can help you avoid legal mistakes. Start by implementing a tenant portal on your website. Within your portal, you can easily manage most of your key responsibilities, like the following:
- Electronic rent collection
- Maintenance requests
- Financial tracking
- Lease end and renewal dates
- Emailing tenants notices for late rent
A tenant portal will streamline your operations significantly, while providing more convenience to your tenants by centralizing all of their needs.
- Collect rent online
It’s much easier to collect rent online than to deal with physical checks, money orders, and cash. For most tenants, being able to pay rent online is a perk, and they won’t object to paying a small fee for the convenience. People don’t want to write a check, get stamps from the post office, and mail a rent check. They want to pay immediately and know that it’s handled.
Collecting rent online works for both you and your tenants. It frees you from having to constantly check your mailbox, sort through papers, go to the bank, and track checks that got lost in the mail.
Since a majority of landlords now collect rent online, there are a handful of apps specifically designed for this purpose. Rent collection apps are much better than just accepting payments through sites like PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, and Zelle. Many include a mobile app for Android and iOs, live support, invoicing options, and will apply automatic late fees according to your specifications.
- Implement stricter screening requirements
The better you screen your tenants, the less you’ll have to manage disruptive situations. Set high standards for your approval process. As long as you don’t break any anti-discrimination laws, you can set the bar as high as you like. For example, it’s recommended to require a credit score of at least 650, and an income of three times the rent. Some landlords only require tenants to earn twice the rent, but that can get sketchy sometimes.
- Don’t rent to friends and family
If you rent to people you know, especially family, you’ll probably spend far more time and energy trying to handle your landlord duties. Friends and family are likely to treat your landlord-tenant relationship casually, and you can expect them to want favors, to be given exceptions, and they might even make it difficult for you to perform regular inspections.
No matter how much you want to help someone you love, it’s best to say no and preserve your time and energy. Simple issues can quickly become challenges that will strain your personal relationship and make it emotionally hard to take action, like evicting them or sending notices for lease violations.
- Add a knowledge base to your tenant portal
Building out a detailed property manual and online knowledge base full of frequently asked questions or issues will free up a lot of your time. Most tenants are capable of finding their own answers if you make them easily available. The information might include contact information for local T.V and internet providers, how to put closet doors back on the track, troubleshooting tips for when a screen pops off a window, and how often to care for certain types of foliage if landscaping is the tenant’s responsibility.
Systems are your best asset
When your goal is to be as hands-off as possible, you need systems to handle redundant, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks. By following the tips in this article, you’ll get more done with less effort, making your investment income a little more passive.