Why Hiring a Property Manager for Your Rental Property Saves Time and Money

Do you have a property that you don’t use and are thinking of renting? Or are you thinking about investing in a well-located apartment or home to generate extra cash flow?

Owning a rental property can certainly bring you many benefits, which explains why there are over 48 million rental units in America.

However, the entire process of marketing your place, finding the right tenants and dealing with any issues that might arise can be a lot of work. The good news? You can hire someone to do all that for you!

Keep reading to find all the reasons you should hire a real estate agent for rental properties.

1. The Real Estate Agent for Rental Knows How to Promote Your House

The big benefit of working with a real estate agent to rent your house is that they know the industry in and out. Even if this isn’t the first time you’re listing a property for rental, your expertise on real estate is likely not even close to that of an agent.

And one of the most crucial ways in which this expertise will come in handy is when it’s time to start marketing your house. After all, starting off with a poor rental ad isn’t exactly setting you up for success.

We know what you might be thinking, “Surely, creating an ad can’t be that hard!”

But it’s not that simple and real estate agents know that. Thanks to their experience, they’ll have a better idea of what information you should include in your ad, which staging photos you should use and in which platforms the ad should be posted.

2. Property Managers Already Have a Database of Potential Tenants

Real estate is very much about networking. As their career progresses, a real estate agent and property manager gathers contact information from many people, which can be useful in the future when houses like yours become available for rental.

In case your estate agent has the right tenants for you in their database, you might not even have to go through the process of marketing your property and waiting for replies. 

3. Agents Schedule and Conduct Rental Viewings

Finding people who seem like a good match for your property is a great win, but after that comes a phase that can be really time-consuming: showing the house.

If your schedule is quite busy as is, the last thing you need to is to squeeze in who-knows-how-many viewings. With a real estate agent, you don’t have to. Not only will they be the ones interacting with all prospective tenants and scheduling the viewings, but they’ll also show the property every single time.

4. Property Managers Perform Tenant Screenings

Having problematic tenants isn’t fun. If you’ve dealt with people who don’t pay rent on time, don’t take good care of the house or don’t respect your rules as a landlord, you know that first-hand.

By hiring the services of an estate agent, you’ll get access to screenings of each potential tenant before you choose one. In case they had problems with previous landlords, you can just rule them out.

A big component of the screenings is the credit check, which informs you about the potential tenants’ financial history. Knowing this information can give you some peace of mind regarding the lease payments they’ll have to do.

5. Property Managers Price Your Rental for Maximum Profit and Fast Tenant Placement

Setting a price for your house that is too high can cause your property to sit on the market for way too long, and this will only make you spend too much money on the vacancy. Not ideal.

A real estate agent knows the area and is familiar with statistics and commonly practiced prices. They’ll know how to evaluate your house in terms of factors like the size, location, number of rooms and more. Based on that, they can come up with a price that gives you the most earnings possible, but that doesn’t scare potential tenants away.

6. Property Managers Help You Draft a Lease 

Renting out a property means having to deal with a fair amount of paperwork. For people who are not familiar with the real estate universe, that can be a bit overwhelming.

Once again, real estate agents have the expertise necessary to handle your lease agreement, as well as other documentation that might be needed.

Even if the agent provides you with a basic agreement and you end up needing to make some amendments, it’s a much better starting point than drafting the entire document yourself.

7. Property Managers Support You With Any Tenant Issues 

If the screenings mentioned before go well and reflect the truth, you won’t have any issues with your tenants. However, mistakes can happen and people can be deceiving to get what they want.

Dealing with issues caused by your tenants could turn into a big headache if you do it by yourself. An experienced real estate agent, however, has probably seen it all and knows how to deal with difficult tenants.

Agents also visit the houses on a regular basis to perform inspections and make sure everything is going as it should and no repairs need to be done.

8. You Only Need to Pay When – and If – a Tenant is Placed

Even with all the benefits we just listed, you could still consider hiring an agent a bit of a financial risk, because the truth is that no matter how experienced an agent is, there’s never a 100% certainty that you’ll end up finding the right tenants for your place.

However, that’s not a problem. You only have to pay an estate agent the full tenant placement (or leasing fee) once a tenant is placed. 

Becoming a Landlord Doesn’t Have to Be a Headache

The benefits of hiring a real estate agent for rental properties come down to one thing: their expertise in the real estate industry.

Even though it’d be an investment on your part, a real estate agent knows what they’re doing and, with them, the chances of finding a good fit for your apartment or rental home are a lot higher.

So, in the end, you’ll save money, time and a big headache. And who could deny that that’s worth the investment?!

If you have a property you’d like to rent, please send us a message. At VerraTerra we charge a flat fee for tenant placement and ongoing property management, regardless of the rental amount. We’d love to help you find the right tenants!