When A Property Manager Would Be Great
We are renting our house ourselves. That’s fine, we collect the rent, we don’t pay a fee to anyone, we communicate with the renters, we take care of repairs.
But there are some moments when I wish we would have gone with a good property manager. First of all we would have gotten more money from the rental and thus probably wouldn’t have to pay anything out of pocket each month like we do now.
Second of all when it came time for repairs I wonder if it would have been easier to deal with a property manager rather then directly with our friends. That’s the problem, it’s hard to separate friends from business, and renting is a business.
We were sent a list of repairs that need to be done and I got an over the phone quote from a plumber. The quote was for anywhere between $500 and $800 – much more then what we were thinking it would be. Our solution was to have a handy friend do the work.
And again, another place a property manager would be great! Once our friends got there, our renter decided that of the six things on the list – only two were really problems.
I wonder if they would have said that should a professional show up? Would they have volunteered the info that the problems really weren’t a big deal thus lowering our overall bill? Somehow, I highly doubt that.
I am calling a plumber for one issue though, and an electrician. The good part about that is they are fixing specific items rather then just looking at a bunch of stuff.
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