With a growing property investment portfolio, it’s important you learn how to manage them all and not lose your sleep over property inventories. Selling those offshoot properties is perhaps the most straightforward way to manage the issue, but that would also mean loss of rental income. Besides the rental income, properties would most likely go up in value in a few years. Therefore, selling them is not the right option.
Managing multiple properties at once could present its unique share of responsibilities and pitfalls. And if things go bad, the consequences would be greater. The following tips shall help you manage a large number of properties at once.
Offload the Responsibility
The thing you should first look into as your portfolio mushrooms is the amount of time you have on your hands to allocate to property management. Like a business owner, you should eventually hire people to take the slack. In other words, it’s worth considering recruiting a property manager.
A property manager’s responsibilities cover an array of services, which includes screening tenants, marketing, organising property maintenance and repairs, paying taxes and collecting rents. You may go with an individual property manager or hire a property portfolio management firm.
Most property management companies employ cloud-based and on-premise property management setups. A cloud system makes it easier to manage property inventories from any part of the world. This means you’ll not have to be physically present at the property for accessing the data you require. Visit Inventory Hive if you’d like to know more about the technology or hire such digital services.
Do Not Buy Hastily
Having enough liquid funds in your hand could tempt you to park them safely in another property or two. Right off the bat, this strategy sounds “sound”. But that isn’t always the case. Buying a property is a business decision, which you shouldn’t commit to blindly. Take your time to find the right deal. You would want a property that would bring you tenants for sure, even if the house requires some fixing up first.
Also, consider how far the property is from the place you live or frequent. If visiting the property regularly is not feasible, you are not investing right. Consider the future potential of the property too. Do you think some home improvement projects would attract wealthier tenants to the property or boost its value? If no, then think twice.
Easy Communication
It’s not recommended to develop a personal relationship with your tenants if you want to treat your property portfolio as a business. However, regardless of the time you would not like to spend dealing with your tenants, they would still require an efficient route to contact someone who is actively managing the property.
Urgent property repairs could be required, for instance. If the problem goes unreported, things would only become worse. Also, if you do not act on the issue reported by a tenant, the tenant would not be held accountable for the inflated repair bill generated. To avoid such scenarios, ensure your tenants have your phone number or email address handy always. A digital management tool would also be helpful as it will invariably come with a built-in communication feature.
