How to Choose the Best Property Manager in Brisbane?
Considering that an investment property is likely to be one of your most valuable assets, it makes sense to take a little time to learn about and select the best manager for that asset.
As someone who owns investment property, who rents a property and someone who also runs a property management business, I have a chance to see the management of rental properties from all sides.
In this article I’ll share my tips on how to go about choosing the right property manager.
Fees and charges
I’m going to address this topic separately and straight of the bat as it still surprises me the amount of people who are hung up on the fees.
Selecting an agent based on who can offer you the cheapest deal is not the way to go. As a property investor, I’ve had good managers and I’ve had bad managers, and I can definitely tell you that bad management is costly in terms of time, money and stress. Yes, you should definitely ask about fees and charges, however, this alone should never be the basis for making a good decision regarding the management of your major asset.
To help you understand how little the fee discussion should impact on you, I’ll give you a concrete example to reference. If you have an investment property that fetches $500pw in rent and you have two managers, one who quotes you 8% commission and another who quotes you 7.5% commission, then you are talking about a difference of $2.50 per week. I know that a difference this small is not enough to have a large impact on my decision when I’m placing my major financial asset in someone’s hands to look after.
Instead, I’m going to be assessing what I think is far more important, the service, knowledge and experience of the company and the property manager(s) at that company. You see, good management can often go unnoticed by the ‘end user’, but bad management…boy, that can go horribly wrong and cost you a lot of money.
Questions to ask your prospective property manager
Here are the sorts of questions and issues I think are most important when choosing your property manager and the questions you should be asking when making enquiries are based around these:
- Company and reputation – has the company been managing property for at least a few years, do they have a good reputation?
- Size of rent roll and number of staff to manage – this is really important, an overworked and overstretched management team cannot give good service infinitely. Realistically, I believe a good and experienced manager can really only do a great job on around 100 properties and will be overstretched beyond this.
- Staff longevity – having consistency of staff is really important to you as an owner, to your tenant. How long have the staff been there?
- Style of management – task based, portfolio based, hybrid. Learn a bit about how a company manages the property. Each of these methods can work but as an owner you want to know
- What is their focus – e.g. cheapest fees, best service, online tools – learn about what they consider to be their strengths and main focus and see if that is also aligned with your expectations.
- Owner portal access – can you easily access information about your property and tenancy online.
- Routine inspections – how frequently will they be inspecting and what type of reports will they deliver.
- Arrears process – ask them to describe their process and timeframes for handling rental arrears.
- Breach and QCAT experience – have they experience in handling difficult tenancies – ask them to describe one or two instances of a difficult situation and how they handled it.
Selecting the right property manager can save you time, money and stress. Property Zest Rentals are Brisbane Property Managers who provide expert knowledge and experience and a high level of service to our clients. Contact us to learn more about our property management services in the Brisbane area and surrounds.