To Self-Manage Your Rental Property or Hire a Property Manager?

Self-managing means more money in your bank account – but it also means more stress and time spent caring for the property. Many homeowners ask if there’s a happy medium – we dive into that here.

Self-managing your own rental property presents a unique set of challenges: You have to market and show the house yourself, background check potential tenants, and draw up a binding lease agreement. Once the resident has moved in, you have to collect rent, attend to all their problems, and find contractors to make the repairs that you can’t handle yourself. 

That last part can be particularly difficult, especially in this day and age, when decent tradespeople are few and far between. You’ll likely have to spend hours researching contractors online, browsing Angi and Yelp, scouring Facebook groups and NextDoor, even consulting with neighborhood message boards. All in all, managing your own rental home is a mountain of work.

The possibility of hiring a traditional property manager – and not having to worry about the complexities mentioned above – is a tempting alternative. However, this option presents its downsides. First and foremost, traditional property managers often overcharge for their services, making it difficult for you to maximize your income. Traditional property managers also have less incentive than you, the owner, to treat a home with the love it deserves. You know all the wonderful nooks and crannies of your home, and it feels practically like a family member. But to a traditional property manager, your property is just another entry on a long, long list.

So let’s be honest.  Neither of the above options is ideal — managing your own property can drain your time and energy, while hiring a traditional property manager can lead to mistreatment of the home and the misuse of your money.

There are a few things you can do, however, to make self-managing a property a viable alternative. Here are some of the “middle ground” options we alluded to in our headline.

1. Build a Team

Instead of using NextDoor and Yelp and Angi to find individual contractors on a case-by-case basis, find a local handyman you can trust and rely on. He (or she) should have their own network that you can take advantage of, to fill in any expertise gaps.

Also we recommend making friends with those who live nearby your rental property. That way, if there’s an emergency and you can’t get a hold of your handyman or your home’s resident, they can potentially pop over and take a look themselves. Obviously they’re not going to be able to fix a big problem, but still they should be able to give you a sense of the scope of the issue. And, of course, if they have lived in the neighborhood for a while, they are likely to be able to add to your Rolodex of support.

2. Automation is Your Friend

There are a lot of great software platforms out there specifically designed for Homeowners to help with everything from rent collection to organizing and itemizing documents you’ll need come tax season. Investopedia has a list of the seven best programs.

3. Choose Your Tenants Wisely

Your resident is always going to be your first line of defense – your eyes and ears.  When a problem occurs, they’ll be the first to know. So identifying residents who are super-responsible and vigilant is especially critical if you’re going to self-manage.

It’s also important that you find residents who love your home as much as you do, and who are willing to pitch in when needed. For example, if there’s a property-threatening problem with a simple fix, in an ideal world you want a resident who’s willing to provide a temporary fix, before the real experts can show up.

4. Ditch the property manager for a modern alternative

Belong is has ditched the property management model to provide the services you have been waiting for – the happy medium that has never existed in property management. Whether you go it alone or get the full-service treatment, Belong can support your path to financial freedom.

Our smarter, future-ready services include:

• Guaranteed rent every month, regardless of if or when your residents pay

• Optimized rental pricing that uses technology and real-time demand to price your home with accuracy

• The Belong app that gives you and your residents access to everything you need

• Innovative financial products including the option to spread maintenance payments over the term of your lease agreement

• Access to dedicated landlords insurance to protect your asset (as well as coverage for your residents)

• Integration with the most popular rental platforms to get your home loved faster

• Instant access to an expansive vendor network of over 10,000 professionals that can handle everything from routine repairs to home upgrades

…and we’re just getting started! Belong is simplifying the rental experience and helping more homeowners reach their financial goals through real estate. Visit our homeowner's page to find out more about services in places like Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin, Oakland, Miami and many, many more.