When you hire a property manager in Seattle or the surrounding area, you are hiring someone to manage the day to day responsibilities of your rental home. As your local property manager, we handle everything from rent collection, dealing with property maintenance and emergencies, tenant relations, handling property related expenses on your behalf, generating statements, maintaining tenant and owner accounting ledgers and direct depositing rental funds to owners. This allows you to enjoy the benefits of being a landlord without having to deal with the stress.
We offer property management in South Snohomish County and most of King County. This includes the major rental markets like Seattle, Kirkland, Bothell, Issaquah, Redmond, Lynwood, Mill Creek and the smaller cities in between. Contact us to verify if your rental property is in our coverage area. Our property managers live in the greater Seattle area, so they know the local market inside and out. This means we get and keep your Washington rental home rented quickly.
There are two elements of property management in Seattle that property managers typically charge.
The first is an initial tenant placement also known as a leasing fee. Our property managers charge $1750 or one month’s rent (whichever is less) to handle all the aspects of getting your place rented. From marketing your rental, showing the rental to potential tenants, screening applicants, collecting move in fees, completing move in reports and handing over the keys to the new renter. Other agencies will charge based on a percentage of the expected rent, which often results in management fees in excess of $3,000 or more. Our property managers want to save you money. Our lower, flat fee, saves our clients 35% or more in most cases.
The second element is monthly property management. At VerraTerra, we charge a flat fee ($175 per month) for property management, regardless of the rental price of the home. Traditionally, everything in real estate is tied to the value of your house. With traditional property management agencies, you’ll pay fees based on a percentage of the rent. Typical ranges are 8-10% per month. Other agencies will often have additional hidden fees. At VerraTerra there are no hidden fees. Our price structure usually saves owners about $1,500 per year or more compared to traditional management companies.
The simple answer is – everything it takes to get your Seattle area rental property rented to qualified tenants. Marketing and professional photos, screening tenants, showing the property, all move in services (signing the lease, move-in inspection, collection of move in fees).
What’s the best way to find qualified tenants for your rental? We’ve found that a credit score alone sometimes does not provide an accurate assessment of an applicant’s financial responsibility. We use credit reports, criminal background reports, court records, employment verification and current and previous landlord references. In addition, we may request additional documentation from the rental applicant once we’ve begun to review all the reports we get. We have a documented acceptance criteria that we provide every applicant a copy of, however we do consider an applicant’s whole picture rather than focus on a single number such as a credit score. This results in less rental turn over for our property management clients.
There are no up-front costs. The tenant placement fee is due once we’ve found and placed a tenant in your rental home. We usually deduct our fees from the tenant move-in costs and/or rent. Note, we do have a cancellation fee of $500 if we begin marketing your home and you decide not to continue to work with us for any reason. This allows us to recoup our expenses for marketing your property.
If we are handling monthly management duties, we are the tenant’s point of contact and where they send the rent. Our monthly fees are deducted from the rent received as is any maintenance costs we’ve paid for up front. The rest is direct deposited to an account you designate.
The leasing fee is only paid when VerraTerra has to place a new tenant. As long as your tenant stays living in your rental, you don’t have to pay a new leasing fee
We recommend at least a one year lease for all tenants. This gives you an easy out if you find your tenants are less than reliable or particularly hard on the property. Due to the high level of service we provide, most tenants who live in properties we manage stay longer than a year. This helps reduce your overall expenses and costs.
Usually within 24 to 48 hours from when the professional photos are done and all paperwork has been complete.
The only accurate answer to this question is … it depends. It depends on your property’s location and condition, the current demand, time of year, and of course, how competitive we are in terms of rental rate. Our managers are intimately familiar with local markets. They will advise you on the best rent to charge to maximize rental profit while making sure your home rents quickly. Our average, across the board is about 30-45 days if priced competitively.
We base our rent amounts on some statistical data and also comparison data to other similar rental units on the market. Unlike sales data, there is no central database with accurate rental data, thus we rely on various services to hopefully find a common point among them. If there isn’t, then we lean on the comparable market rents more to base our initial asking rent.
For single family rentals, the tenants are responsible for their own utilities. Tenants are expected to start service in their names when they move in. In 2012, most water utilities stopped allowing tenants to transfer the water/sewer bill into their names. The solution is to simply have the water utility send a duplicate bill to the service address. For condos and townhomes, tenants are responsible for whatever utilities the homeowners association (HOA) doesn’t cover.
A good rule of thumb is that the landlord is responsible for anything that isn’t done frequently. For example, servicing the furnace (usually every 2 to 3 years), cleaning the gutters and/or roof (maybe once a year depending on your location), barking the yard, trimming hedges, replacing broken fixtures/appliances. Tenants are responsible for basic maintenance such as mowing the lawn (if there is one), basic weeding, changing the filters in the furnace, replacing batteries in smoke detectors, replacing light bulbs, etc. Tenants are also responsible for resolving issues they caused like unclogging the sink/toilet/tub.
We work with you to create a plan for maintenance issues before we start managing your property. For example, some owners are local and might want to do the repairs themselves. Others may live out of the area or prefer to use a professional in all circumstances. We’ll work with you to set parameters for routine and emergencies maintenance issues.
If it’s an existing tenant, we can take over the monthly management after a review the tenant’s past performance. If it’s a new rental, we require the prospective tenant be screened by us. Based on our experience and screening tools, this ensures the best qualified placement.
Yes. We do this quite often.
As all property managers and landlords should do, we carefully document the condition the property is in when the tenant moves in. VerraTerra Property Management takes it a step further. We use photos and/or video to supplement our written report. What we want to prevent is any disagreement on the move-in condition of the property or what items were left in the property.
Your pet policy is whatever you want it to be. No pets, dogs only, cats only, cats or dogs okay, etc. Keep in mind that limiting pets may limit your rental audience. For tenant’s with pets, we do collect an extra pet deposit that can vary depending on the type of pet. The biggest worry is the pet damaging the home either from scratching, chewing or…relieving themselves on the carpet. The tenant is expected to clean or repair the damage. If they can’t, we use funds from their security and pet deposit to get the issue fixed
We usually deposit rents to the owner’s account by the 15th of each month. Rent is due on the 5th. We like to let all the funds we receive sit for 48 hrs to make sure everything clears. Then we initiate our direct deposits to owners so they reach them by the 15th. In cases where the 15th lands on a Monday, owners will get their deposits on the next business day
