.webp)
Property managers have many challenges in their day-to-day work. Figuring out the best methods to deal with the common challenges they face is a great way to ensure you and the rest of your team are as successful as possible.
In this blog, we will go over the most common and significant challenges property managers face on a daily basis and a few tips on how to avoid or lessen their burden.
Keeping vacancies to a minimum is key to keeping your costs down and your profits high. Vacancies are a constant in the world of property management, however, keeping things like turnover time to a minimum is a great way to lessen the impact vacancies have on your bottom line. Here are some tips to help keep vacancies and turnover time down:
If you find a person(s) with a strong track record of being an outstanding tenant, try to lock them in for longer leases of 2 or 3 years.
This will limit the amount of time the property is empty and help you save money by not having to find new tenants every year.
Before your tenant's lease is up, make sure you talk with them to figure out if they intend on extending their lease or not. This will give you ample time to find a new tenant if your current one says they do not wish to re-sign.
This extra time should allow you to have another tenant set up for when the current one moves out, reducing vacancy time and increasing the profitability of your business.
If your property is overpriced under current market conditions, then it will sit empty for quite some time. Having a thorough understanding of the real estate market your property is in makes sure you list the property for a competitive price and it gets filled quickly.
Finding a reliable service vendor can be a challenge and, sometimes, even a risk. You can spend hours digging for vendor information on Craigslist, Google, local classifieds, and even newspaper ads. You might think you're in a good spot once you've found a vendor who does good work, but there's no guarantees you'll have that quality forever.
Vendor procurement is the headache that never goes away for property managers. You'll always need a new type of service, someone who can get the job done in a rush, or a new vendor who can take on more work. The process is painstaking, but it doesn't need to be.
Embracing vendor management and procurement softwares like VendorPM can help you turn the multiple hour process of finding and reaching out to vendors into one that takes only a few minutes. Learn more and request your first quote from a vendor with the link below!
Not getting paid on time is something that all property managers have to deal with over the course of their careers. Not only does this affect cash flows, but it also means property managers need to spend time hunting down payments from tenants instead of using their time for other matters. Here are a few ways to help you get paid on time:
Giving your tenants multiple options to pay their rent makes it easier for them to pay you, and thus more likely they get the money to you on time.
Although having strict rules regarding payment seems like the simplest way to get paid and thus the most likely to be successful, this tends to not be the case.
Having multiple payment methods gives your tenants the option to pick the method that best works for them, which directly translates to more tenants paying you on time.
Sometimes tenants don't pay their rent on time because they simply forget to do so. Having reminders set to send out to your tenants when their rent is due will help to keep your forgetful tenants from being late with their rent and help you keep your cash flows consistent. Use an efficient property management software that automates these reminders and payment collection for all buildings in your portfolio.
Having a problematic tenant can be a huge headache for property management companies, not to mention expensive. A tenant who doesn't pay their rent on time or who causes excessive damage to the property can have a serious impact on your bottom line.
In order to avoid problem tenants, make sure to properly screen any potential tenants before they sign the lease. This includes a background check, requesting references from previous landlords or employers, and a credit check.
Making sure potential tenants pass all these checks with flying colours will help keep problem tenants to a minimum and keep you in the green.
Just like having longer leases with your tenants helps the bottom line, having them renew their leases when they do eventually run out is just as important.
Keeping your tenants for multiple years basically boils down to keeping them happy. If your tenants are happy with their place and the way it is managed then you give them less motivation to look elsewhere. Here are a few ways to stay on your tenants good side:
It is important for property management professionals to keep an open line of communication with your tenants so they always know where to reach you in the event any issues come up.
It also helps establish and maintain a good relationship with your tenants, which can help with everything from getting paid on time to retention. Use a robust property management system to automate tenant communication, so that nothing falls through the cracks and your tenants are always up to date on any issues that may concern them.
Nobody wants to sit with a broken air conditioner during a heat wave. Getting to things like maintenance requests quickly can make a huge difference in the quality of your customer service and allow you to operate efficiently.
If you take a long time to get things done, or don't get them done right the first time, your tenants may become upset. Getting urgent jobs done quickly and on time can be one of the biggest challenges in and of itself though.
VendorPM allows property managers like yourself to ensure that your maintenance requests are fulfilled on time by providing you access to a large pool of pre-vetted vendors in your area that you can choose from, streamlining the bidding and job awarding process, automating compliance checks, and ensuring your preferred vendors remain compliant - all under a single platform. It also provides robust analytics and reporting on vendor performance so you can keep property owners and asset managers updated.
Get a demo of the end-to-end Vendor Lifecycle Management platform that allows you to modernize how you work with service vendors - from credentialing to procurement to contract management and streamline your day to day time consuming tasks and operate efficiently.
.png)
.png)