When Should a Lettings Agent Hire a Property Management Company?
As a lettings agent starting out, you are used to taking on a lot of work. That is how you build your business and, in order to maximise your profit, you try to do as much as possible for yourself. However, as soon as you begin to grow something has to give. This is when a lettings agent needs to hire a property management company.
When You Need Help with Property Maintenance
You have a duty to your landlords to keep their properties maintained to a high standard. This keeps their tenants happy and increases the chances of them extending their lease, giving peace of mind to the property owners. But things do go wrong. Drains become blocked, washing machines fail, pipes leak and so on.
You would advise your landlords to build up a financial contingency because that would soften the blow of these issues occurring. In the same way, as the letting agent, you need to build up a time contingency. The more properties you let, the more chance there is of multiple maintenance issues occurring at once. This can stretch your resources to breaking point.
It is worth looking at the portfolio of properties on your books and imagining how you would cope if there was an urgent callout at each of them on the same day. If you think it would be simply too much for your workforce to deal with whilst also concentrating on the daily tasks that bring in revenue, that is the time you need to hire a property management company.
When you hire a property management company like Executive Property Management Solutions, they respond immediately to maintenance issues on your behalf, leaving you and your staff to concentrate on bringing in more landlords and matching more prospective tenants up with their perfect property.
When You Want to Minimise the Risk for Your Big Plans
The problem with drastically upscaling a business straight away is that your costs skyrocket overnight. If you have enough properties on the books to expand, you might find that the costs of finding new premises to accommodate new staff members and the payroll costs of hiring new permanent employees are prohibitive.
In addition, some of the tasks a property management company takes on are the ones performed by specialist staff that cost that much more to employ. If you need a legal expert to draw up specific tenancy agreements, it can be more cost effective to have that included in a package of services than to spend time, effort and money uncovering the one perfect candidate to add to your permanent team.
For lettings agents with big aspirations, hiring a property management company is a perfect way to upscale without so much risk.
When You Need Someone on Top of the Current Laws
The rental market is a bit of a political football at the moment, with both major parties wanting to appear to be the voice of ‘Generation Rent’. This has resulted in a string of new landlord rules and suggested shake-ups of the sector.
It is very difficult to keep track of when the government will implement new laws, to know whether you need to worry about proposed changes to the rental system and what you need to do to be prepared for all eventualities.
As you become busier, you have less time to delve deep into each new piece of legislation, and that is when you need to hire a property management company. It is the job of property management firms to be on top of the very latest lettings rules, which means you can concentrate on what you do best.
Want to Hire a Property Management Company?
If you are a lettings agent who realises they have reached a point where they need support, contact us today. Call 0208 5757630 or fill in the form at the bottom of the page.
