Deciding to start your own Montgomery County rental property business is an exciting time. There is so much that goes into investing in your first property, placing your first tenants, and of course, managing your first rental property.
And, if you choose the hands-on approach and decide to manage your own property, you get to take the front line and have an active role in all things management and maintenance when it comes to your rental home.
There are plenty of benefits to managing your own property:
- You have direct control over everything that takes place in your rental
- You are in constant contact with your tenants
- You may save a little cash avoiding property management fees
However, there are many more benefits to handing over the large responsibility of managing your Maryland rental property to a highly qualified property management company such as Bay Management Group. In fact, you can even be a seasoned property owner and reap the benefits of a property management company caring for your investment properties.
Today we will explore the reasons why you should not attempt to manage your own Montgomery County investment property and how handing the reigns over to the experts will save you time, money, and plenty of headaches.
The Downsides to Managing Your Properties
The prospect of hiring a property management company to manage your investment properties can be a daunting one. Though it can be appealing to think of someone handling the day-to-day administration of your rental property business, it is not always easy to hand over something as important as managing your rental property.
However, with a little due diligence and a lot of research, you will find that employing a quality property management company is typically the best choice. In fact, here are some convincing reasons why you should not consider managing your own Montgomery County rental properties.
You Do Not Have the Right Expertise
If you want to get into investing in real estate but have no experience in the field of property management, it is wise to leave that up to the professionals. Learning as you go can be highly ineffective and end up costing you a great deal of time and money in the long run. By attempting to manage your own properties you run the risk of:
- Hiring the wrong vendors to make repairs, which can become costly and time-consuming
- Using ineffective advertisement that can lead to longer vacancies
- Violating Fair Housing laws or becoming a victim of alleged discrimination that can land you in court
- Improperly screening tenants, which makes for trouble tenants
- Implementing poor rent collection policies that can dig into your bottom line
The truth is, if you have no experience in managing a rental property, you should not start doing so with your own costly investment property.
Managing over 1000 units in the Baltimore-Washington D.C area, Bay Management Group has years of in-depth property management experience. Less than 1% of all placed tenants are evicted under the management of BMG. This is because of their strict tenant screening and placement procedures. Plus, being broker-owned and locally operated, Bay Management Group is educated in all things property management and is actively involved with all of their properties.
Your Portfolio is Growing
As your portfolio of Montgomery County properties increases, so do your responsibilities. Since many people get into the rental property business to make passive income to fund vacations, pay off debt, and even replace their corporate income, they tend to want to increase the amount of properties they own and make them available for lease.
The problem is, the more properties you own, the more tenants, administrative duties, and problems you encounter. Owning multiple properties will never yield a true “passive” income if you choose to manage the properties on your own. Your time commitment will increase significantly the more properties you have and you will end up sacrificing many of the following:
- Your job. If you are a full-time employee seeking to build a strong rental property business, balancing both by managing your own properties is going to take some serious luck. Either your career or properties will begin to suffer over time, possibly leading to the downfall of one or the other.
- Your family. If you have a lot of extended family you spend time with or small children at home, managing your own properties is destined to cut into family time. Late night maintenance emergencies, long days at the office dealing with paperwork and tenant placement, and day-to-day communications with tenants can eat into family time.
- Your social life. Just like your family time, any type of social life you have will likely be interrupted if managing your own properties. Your tenants deserve the best treatment and managing your own properties cannot be performed at your convenience. This means being prepared to bolt out the door at any moment to take care of something property-related.
- Your free time. Many adults crave the elusive “me time” that seems to dwindle as families grow, careers boom, and life happens. If you are on-call to manage your Maryland properties, you may find what little bit of free time you have for yourself again being taken away due to plumbing issues, non-payment of rent, and property showings, just to name a few.
Enlisting the help of a property management group that is on call 24/7 will diminish this loss of time, leaving you room to build a bigger career, enjoy family holidays, get social with your friends, and even enjoy that book you have been trying to find time to read. Plus, you will reap the rewards Montgomery County properties bring in, all with very little effort on your part.
Your Personality Does Not Click With Others
Customer service is a major component that property management companies focus on in order to gain customers and retain tenants. If you are not the type of person that wants to deal with the headaches that come with evictions, complaints, and maintenance requests, you should not manage your own rental properties.
Property managers, like the ones at Bay Management Group, are well-versed in how to deal with even the toughest of tenants. They understand the landlord-tenant laws, can buffer any issues your tenant has with your property, and pride themselves in being able to diffuse any complaints or issues that arise.
For Those That Need More Convincing
If you are still not convinced that employing a property management company is the right decision for you, check out these other reasons why managing you own properties may not be your best option:
- The location of your properties span far and wide, requiring extensive travel commitments
- The condition of your property is not pristine, which means repair requests may be regular and often-occurring
- You are unsure how to add extra curb appeal to your properties to attract high-quality tenants
- You don’t know how to draft legally-compliant lease agreements with the provisions you want
Altogether, hiring a property management company such as Bay Management Group to manage your Montgomery County rental properties far outweighs the benefits that come with managing properties on your own. With the lowest monthly management rate in the region, a 12-month tenant warranty in place, and a support staff of over 20 people, you can rest assured you will save money and your property will be well-cared for with Bay Management Group.
In addition, services such as tenant screening, vacancy advertisement, lease drafting, an on-the-clock maintenance staff, and in-depth knowledge of the Montgomery County market are what Bay Management Group provides their property owners. Contact us now and see how Bay Management Group can help take a load off your plate and give you the peace of mind you’re looking for with your rental property investment.