Paul Ruston, Broker
Renters Choice Homes
Phone: 480-626-0166 [email protected]
Mailing and Delivery Address:
1334 E Chandler Blvd
Suite 5 A-16
Phoenix, AZ 85048-6267
Physical: 16022 S 13th Ave
Phoenix, AZ 85045
9 Biggest Mistakes in choosing a Property Management Company.
Choosing a Management Company that doesn’t inspect every home every month.How can you know your home is being taken care of if your Property Manager (PM) isn’t looking at it every single month? We inspect all of our homes every single month. We do interior inspections 6 months after a tenant moves in and then yearly after that. We are not aware of any other property management company that performs this crucial task.
Choosing a company that nickel and dimes you to death. Your first question you should ask any management company should be “tell me everything that I will be charged for”. You need to know if they pad their repair bills. Do they charge inspection fees? Management renewal fees? File start up fees? File extension fees? Lease renewal fees? At Renters Choice Homes we charge $895 as a leasing fee and $85 per month management. There are no other owner fees.
Thinking you “save money” but not paying a leasing fee or not using MLS (ex: Zillow only marketing). A company that charges a leasing fee uses that money for commissions to other Realtors to find a quality tenant as fast as possible. It also provides automatic access to the MLS (Multiple Listing Service). Through the MLS, homes are then exposed to virtually every other rental and real estate web site out there. That means you get exposure through Zillow, Iframe, Hotpads, Trulia, Rently, Realtor.com and more. Without that exposure companies are relying on their personal (low volume) web site and sign traffic. While that may work eventually, how much money would you lose by having your home sit there vacant?
Paying a percentage (%) of the lease price as a Management Fee.Why do some companies charge twice as much to manage a $2000/month home as a $1000/month home? Are they harder to manage? No. In fact, low priced homes are the hardest to manage. Tenants in those homes are usually younger, lower income, and financially or emotionally vulnerable to life’s changes. As a result there are more job losses, break ups/divorces and surprise financial happenings that can easily affect the likelihood of getting rent on time (or at all). Renters Choice charges a low flat fee of $85 per month for any home we manage.
Trusting your Management Company. Does that sound cynical? Yes. But after years of shocking stories of promises made and not delivered by other companies, not trusting your property management company is the wisest move a smart property owner can make. With Renters Choice all of our communications are documented and available to you. All repairs have invoices with photos proving the repairs were done. All inspections are documented and date stamped and continually available for your review so that you know that we have done what we have said we would do. Will you trust us? Of course. But we believe you should “Trust but Verify”.
Choosing a Property Management Company doesn’t use electronic lockboxes. Not only do we use electronic lockboxes that requires tenants register to use them, we use Realtor electronic lockboxes as well. They track all activity from who seen the house to when. They also allow us to get feedback on all showings. With feedback we can quickly discover if your price is in line with other rentals in the area or if there is an easily curable condition that we can take care of quickly. That reduces market time and vacancy days. We never use generic combination lockboxes and give the prospective tenant the code. That is a huge security issue. Once a tenant has the combination what is to prevent them from coming back into the home and taking what they want?
Choosing a company that has too many “active” properties. The easiest way to gauge a Management Company’s marketing success is reviewing their “Properties Available” page on their web site. In this market a home should never be on the market longer than a couple of weeks. If a Management Company has 20 or 30 properties available that is a sign that individual owners are being forgotten and thousands of dollars of potential rent is being lost.
Not having Broker negotiated leases. A lease is an extremely important contract between you and the tenant. As with all contracts, they should be negotiated by skilled professionals. At Renters Choice, all leases are negotiated by our Broker who has been in real estate sales and leasing for well over 24 years. He also has been one of the Top 300 Realtors in America, the Top 100 Realtors in America and Top 50 Solo Producing Realtors in America. He has negotiated literally THOUSANDS of successful contracts.
Choosing a company that has cancelation fees. One way to judge a company’s confidence in their service is reviewing their cancellation fees. If they truly believe they do a good job and keep the promises they make, then there wouldn’t be a need for cancelation fees. At Renters Choice, we are so confident that you will love our service that if you aren’t happy within the first 90 days you can cancel your service and receive 120% of your money back! If you want to cancel after that, there are no fee! It’s as simple as that.
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