One of the benefits to working with a property manager in Charleston is that you don’t have to worry about the day-to-day tasks involved in leasing, managing, and maintaining your rental property. Your management team is taking care of all the details, including marketing, screening, rent collection, and responses to emergency and routine maintenance issues.
So, what are you responsible for when you work with a property manager?
We are using this blog to highlight some of the work we need you to do in order to ensure our relationship is successful and we’re helping you reach your investment goals.
Communicate with Your Charleston Property Managers
A big part of any successful relationship is communication. Your property management partners will need you to remain available to them in case there are questions, emergencies, or major decisions that need to be made about potential evictions, lease renewals, and property improvements.
Always keep your contact information up to date. You want your managers to be able to reach you by phone, text, email, or through your owner portal.
Get comfortable with the owner portal you’re provided. There’s a lot of great information there, and you can keep up with your property by viewing invoices, receipts, rental payments, lease documents, inspection reports, and financial statements.
Prepare to Maintain Your Property
It’s difficult for your property management team to provide a good rental experience to tenants and protect the condition of your property if you aren’t willing to invest in its maintenance. Routine repairs and replacements will be necessary throughout the tenancy, even when your home is in generally good condition. You’ll need a budget for that, and you’ll need to trust us when we tell you it’s time to fix something.
Sometimes, owners will push back against our recommendations because the repair seems minor or cosmetic or they don’t want to spend the money.
Deferred maintenance, however, always costs more than taking care of minor issues right away. If we tell you something needs to be done to maintain your property, we have likely researched all the best options, talked with our vendor partners, and made an assessment based on our experience and judgment. Listen to our recommendations and be willing to keep your investment well-maintained and attractive to tenants.
Responsibility Requires Authority
You need to trust your Charleston property managers to do the job you hired them to do.
If you tend to be a micromanager who is over-involved in the management decisions associated with your rental property, you’re only going to delay the work that your management company needs to do.
Leave the authority for choosing tenants, communicating with tenants, and making decisions to your management partner.
We don’t let our owners select their own tenants because it leads to liability risks. We have a strict screening process in place that keeps you compliant with all fair housing laws. We don’t let our owners communicate with tenants because it causes confusion and leads to inconsistencies with our residents.
Trust your property manager. Leave them with the authority to make those day-to-day decisions that you don’t need to be bothered with.
If you’d like to talk more about the importance of the relationship between property managers and property owners, please contact us at Charleston Home Rentals. We’d love to tell you about what it’s like to work with our team.
