I wrote a blog in the past about 20 questions to ask before hiring a property manager. But before you do that, you have to ask yourself if you really want to hire a property manager. Hiring a property manager is not for everyone. For some people, it’s better off managing by themselves. So how do you know if you should hire a property manager? The answer is quite simple. You just have to ask the below 3 questions to yourself.
1. Are you willing to educate yourself on how to manage your property?
Managing a property is not rocket science. That said, you have to know how to do it legally and ethically, or you could run into some troubles. Also, things will change, and new problems will come up, so you need to be willing to educate yourself continually. If that sounds like you, then you passed the first test.
2. Do you have time to manage your property?
While there are some repetitive tasks you have to do every month, such as bookkeeping, sometimes things come in waves. In other words, you will have a time where you love managing properties because you absolutely do nothing but just waiting for the rent to hit your bank account. On the other hands, sometimes you want to pull your hair out because your tenants are unreasonable, or they may be reasonable, but your property runs into a problem after problem. Or you have to wait for the inspector to come to the property, ALL day. Or you get a call in the middle of the night that the tenants locked themselves out. Or the heat stopped working in the middle of the night. These things happen. It happened to me! All these things will take time out of your life. If you are willing to dedicate your time to managing your property, you passed the second test.
3. Do you enjoy managing your property?
Your time is one of the most valuable assets you have. Why waste it doing something you don’t like? You don’t have to like everything about property management, but if you are going to do it, you might as well enjoy it. You are doing a great service to the community by managing a property. Home is something all of us need. And you are being part of that by providing a property management service. That should get you excited.
If you answered yes to all the above questions, then you probably should consider managing your property yourself. While it will take some time and effort, the reward will be worth it.
One final note I want to point out is that I didn’t mention anything about the fees. In other words, you don’t want to do it yourself to save some money because you aren’t. When you manage yourself, you may not pay to a property manager, but you are still “paying” yourself. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. You just have to make sure that if you want to “pay yourself,” you do your job by educating yourself, spending some time and enjoy it.
