Think about your income, about your bottom line. Think about South Lake Tahoe vacation rentals property management… because the smart way to manage your vacation rental property is to have someone else manage it for you. “But wait,” I can hear you insisting; “they’re going to take a cut of every rent check I bring in. Doesn’t it make more sense to manage my property personally? I’ve got a cousin who’s good with plumbing, and a nephew who can drywall. What’s the big deal?”
I’ll tell you what the big deal is.
Headaches.
The big deal is headaches. The headache of vetting and verifying every single prospective tenant, to make sure that you’ve opened your doors to someone who isn’t going to disappear in the middle of the night with half of your furniture… or, worse: someone who will take up any space not already occupied by your furniture with their home-based methamphetamine lab. This kind of thing happens; why take the risk? But, for the sake of getting a move on, let’s assume that you actually find a reputable and upstanding tenant who will pay their rent, on time, without any fuss, and avoid causing any egregious damage to your property. If you’re that lucky – assuming that you can count on that, which you really shouldn’t – aren’t you all set then, without the services of a property management company?
Repairs.
Okay… so, things break. That’s a part of reality. It happens. When something breaks on you, what do you do? Drive fifty miles to your rental property to repair it yourself? Pay out of pocket to have a professional come and do it? Have your cousin apply his questionable and completely uncertified skills to the task, and risk opening yourself up to the potential of a lawsuit for forcing your paying tenant to live in conditions of shoddy and improper maintenance?
Do any of these sound like particularly appealing ideas?
Property management firms maintain relationships with the repair and maintenance workers in their local community. They can get somebody with professional accreditation to come out and effect emergency repairs quickly and conveniently. Best of all, you don’t have to worry about it; you likely won’t even have to be individually informed of each and every last minor day-to-day event that occurs… and certainly not when they occur, particularly if it’s at 2:30 in the morning. Unless something is burning down, a property management firm will assure you of a good night’s rest.
Aesthetics.
Do you know what you can charge for your property? Do you really? What if you’re undercharging against the actual rental value of your property by $500 per month? $1000? What if you’re actually under-charging by more than what it would cost you to pay for vacation rentals property management in South Lake Tahoe to begin with? That’s right, hiring a management firm could literally pay for itself… which is to say nothing of the potential improvements. A fresh coat of paint, a little landscaping, and suddenly your property is worth $500 a month more than it already was, on top of everything else!
This is the sort of thing that a management firm can do for you. They can effect minor improvements on the basis of an existing agreement – meaning that they don’t have to call you each and every time – and, as a result, you can earn more from your properties than you otherwise would. In a place like South Lake Tahoe, this is particularly valuable to you; a typical house might be rented for several thousand dollars per month during the summer months. If you could up that value by even 10%, wouldn’t you want to?