When a landlord is interested in managing a property alone, without the help of a professional property manager, there are several situations that might be difficult to handle.
In these cases, the help of a property manager will be invaluable:
Marketing Your Home
There are limited options for the DIY landlord when it comes to marketing a property.
There is Craigslist of course, and a few other websites where you can list your home and include a few pictures of the property. However, sites like these will attract some low grade tenants. There will be sob stories from people about not having enough money to cover rent and they will often pull at your heartstrings, trying to get into your property even if they are not qualified. A DIY landlord might not have access to background checks and credit reports. People can also make it hard for you when you deny them. If you pull an applicant’s credit and decide not to rent him the house, make sure you keep and provide proper documentation. Otherwise, you risk having a potential renter allege you are discriminating against him or her for some reason. Have a good system in place to protect yourself during a denial.
Lease Preparation for Your Rental Home
When it comes to preparing the lease, a DIY landlord may not have access to a strong lease agreement. You do not want to download some random lease from the Internet or spend $100 buying a lease online when you don’t know if it will cover all of the Texas legal requirements. The lease template you buy on a website might have been written in Maryland, and it won’t help you here in San Antonio. Be careful.
Rent Collection
What if a tenant pays rent late? How will you properly collect the rent if you cannot get your tenants to pay? You have to think about standard rent collection as well. If you ask your tenants to mail you a rent check every month, are you prepared for what you will do if the rent gets lost in the mail? Remember to document all of the rent you collect because you will need that information for your 1099 forms at the end of the year, when you are filing your taxes with the IRS.
Repairs
Repairs are a big challenge for the DIY landlord. A tenant may call you on Christmas Eve to report the electricity is out. You will have to drop everything and make the repair. A lot of organizing and coordinating with tenants and vendors at inconvenient times goes into repairs. Managing this part of your property can be a hassle, especially if you have your own full time job and family responsibilities to manage.
Move Out Procedures
If a tenant moves out of your home, and you are not happy with the condition the property was left in, you may want to withhold some of the security deposit. However, you must document everything that will justify your reasons for withholding some or all of the deposit. You will need pictures, videos, invoices for any work that needed to be done, etc. You can get into a lot of trouble if you withhold the security deposit’s return without documenting and stating why.
There are a lot of procedures a DIY landlord must be aware of. If you have further questions, or you’d like to talk about working together, please contact us as RentWerx San Antonio so we can help you out.
