It is one of life’s most difficult transactions. You buy an investment property with the view to establishing a portfolio of property for you and your family’s future. Then you engage a Property Manager to manage the property for you and find you a good tenant. Amazingly they find you a tenant within days and it’s all good news. The tenant checks out, they have a full-time job and they can pay the 4 weeks bond and the first 2 weeks rent.
You are now officially a Property Investor… Woohoo!
Fast forward to 6 months and the deposits into your rental account become sporadic at best. You contact the Property Manager, who you haven’t spoken to since the property was rented, and she says that the tenants are having some issues and they have assured her that they will catch up soon. Weeks go by without any further funds and little feedback from your Property Manager. You finally get her to return your call and find out that tenant has had a marriage break up and one of the parties to the lease has left the home. You now realise that this is a problem for you as you are relying on the rent to pay the mortgage on this property.
So the big question here is who is working for who? Right now you are feeling let down and somewhat deflated. The whole experience is now making you question whether or not having an investment property is worth all the hassle. Property Investment like Property in general in Australia is almost a National Sport, without the Grand Final. So having an investment property and handing it over to a Property Manager, based on the above situation is scary.
We as owners of the office have properties of our own. The above story is real and happened to us. It wasn’t our first but it was as much of a challenge for us as it would have been for anyone having to find that extra money to cover the loan repayments while waiting for the tenant to pay the rent. They never did by the way, and left the property in a state of disrepair. The property was managed by another Real Estate office.
So knowing what we know we have decided to run our Property Management Business in a very different way.
You as the owner of the property will be assigned an Asset Manager. The Asset Manager works wholly and solely for you looking after your asset. They operate in unison with a Property Manager, as a team. The Property Manager liaises with the tenants and only the tenants. Any issues that are to be raised are directed to the Property Manager, who as part of the team passes the information on to the Asset Manager, your Asset Manager who communicates directly with you. Your Asset Manager may have an authority to act on your behalf for some matters but this is something that you and your Asset Manager decide at time of listing the property for rent. Your Asset Manager is the only person that you deal with. They are there to look after every detail and aspect of your property even arranging insurance or finance. You will be kept informed of your property performance at every step of the way by your Asset Manager. They are working for you and only for you.