Essential Questions to Ask before You Hire a Property Management Company like Simarc
Questions to ask yourself before you hire a property management company like Simarc
• How many property managers do I want to interview? While the attached form allows you to compare 3, I recently interviewed 5 for my new property. A little exhausting to say the least!
• How will I find out who to interview? I find personal referrals from other property managers to be the best method.
• What are the most important areas to me in finding a property manager. Do you want the cheapest fees or the highest rent or is the service provided more important?
To follow is quite a long list of questions you may wish to ask a potential property manager. Have a read through it before you go to interview an agent and identify which questions are most important to you. After the questions is a form you can fill in while interviewing the agents. It’s best to start from the far right column so that you can fold that over out of sight when you start interviewing the next agent.
Structure:
• How is the property management department structured?
• Who will be your point of contact?
• How many people will you have to deal with on an ongoing basis?
• What is their contingency plan for when your point of contact is ill or on leave?
• What is the ratio of staff to properties
managed?
Maintenance:
• What is their procedure?
• Do they contact the property own for all maintenance?
• Do they charge a fee to conduct maintenance?
• What percentages of their tradespeople are licensed?
• Can the owner nominate their own tradespeople?
• How are large bills paid (directly by the owner or through the rental receipts)?
Lease renewals:
It is very important to choose a company that handles their lease renewals promptly and efficiently ensuring your tenant always remains on a current lease.
• What is their procedure?
• Do they perform rental increases only upon lease renewal or during the period as well?
• Does the company charge to renew an existing lease (ie: where they don’t need to find a new tenant
