A Checklist for Hiring your Property Management Company

Checklist

Know what to expect from your property management company

Whether you have real estate as an investment or you’re a corporate user with a portfolio that you don’t have the in-house staff to manage, professional property management can be an asset. The right property manager for your industrial space in St. Louis will save you time, save you money and keep your property filled with tenants so that you can focus on investing or on running your business. While every client’s needs are different, here are some factors to think about as you look for the right property management company for you:

Three Initial Screening Factors

Before getting into the details, there are three factors that can serve as tools to qualify or disqualify companies. If a company gets these basics right, it bodes well that it could be a match for your industrial space in St. Louis.

  1. Responsiveness. To a large extent, a property management company’s business is answering the phone. Whether it’s being responsible to you as the owner, tenants or to prospective tenants, it’s important that the company be responsive. If you can’t get a call back as a prospect, imagine what might happen when the company has earned your business.
  2. Reputation. Talking to a few people in the market will quickly let you know about how the company is perceived. If you don’t hear good things, consider talking to someone else.
  3. Experience and Focus. Your property manager should be experienced in the type of building that you want to have managed. The best manager in the area for a multi-tenant light industrial space in St. Louis probably won’t know what to do with a single family residence.

Getting Down to Details

Once you’ve established the basics, here are some details to look into:

  • Your Particular Manager. Try to find out who you’ll be working with and ensure that you and he click well.
  • Reporting Capabilities. Get a description of how the company will report to you on the work it does and the results it achieves.
  • Management and Repairs. Find out which repair tasks are handled in house, which are subbed out and how you will be billed. Good maintenance costs money, but it can be unwise to spend too much on inflated travel costs, unreasonable minimums and the like.
  • Response times. Have the manager explain how it responds to tenant calls and what kind of turnaround you and your tenants can expect. Given that property management is a big change, it’s important to keep your tenants happy.
  • Insurance and Licensure. Confirm that the property management company has appropriate licensure and the right insurance to protect it — and you.
  • Tenant Screening Process. If the manager will also be leasing your space, find out how it screens tenants.

The Bottom Line

One factor is missing from this check list — pricing. The right property management company probably won’t be the least expensive one. However, as long as the firm is within the ball park of what other companies charge, it’s worth the money to get good service and to have your industrial space in St. Louis managed properly. Ultimately, a good manager will more than pay for itself.

2 responses to “A Checklist for Hiring your Property Management Company”

  1. Andre Franklin says:

    These definitely seem like good things to check for when hiring a property management company. Reputation and experience would probably be two of the first things that I’d check. I wouldn’t want to hire someone that was new to the business or had lots of upset customers. I’d want to get a company that knows what they’re doing and does what it takes to make their customers happy with their service.
    Andre | http://www.spectrumpropertymanagement.com/provo-utah/

  2. Delores Lyon says:

    I agree that it is important to choose a good, reputable property management company. I would want to make sure I’m renting out a place that has a reasonable owner. I want to make sure that I can work well with the property owners in case anything happens. http://www.joyceproperty.com.au/2013/06/28/property-management/

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