Advantages fo Choosing a Large Property Manager
There are advantages to having a small-sized property manager. In this article, we will discuss why you should choose a large property manager. When we started this business we had a big dream of driving around Birmingham and seeing evernest signs all over the place. We thought the more signs we could get in yards, the more residents and owners we would attract. Now that we manage almost 2,000 houses in six cities, we worry that residents and owners may be turned off that we are somehow "too big". While there is validity to the argument that there are certain benefits smaller property management companies can offer their clients. We believe the benefits of a larger company greatly outweigh the smaller alternative. That's why we'll do our best to convince you why you should choose a large property manager. We think the benefits can be found in all the categories - leasing, management, home maintenance, and communication.
Leasing
Marketing Homes: Marketing homes is like a sales funnel you may be familiar with seeing. Driving prospective resident traffic to know that a property exists and is available for rent is the beginning of that funnel. Large management companies have a unique opportunity to drive an inordinate amount of traffic to their website and to their leasing lines. During the summer we receive upwards of 20,000 visits to our website from prospective residents. The largest sources of prospective resident leads other than our website is Trulia, Zillow, Craigslist and Multiple Listing Service (MLS). While we do market on all those sites, savvy large managers will drive traffic back to their website so they can market that home and remarket other homes. This drives up the number of people that see that the home is available. Going back to the sales pipeline, more prospects on our site looking for houses means we will receive more applications. Large managers are also at a unique advantage with regard to application processing in two areas:
The first is their underwriting skills.
Large managers are used to hearing certain stories that don't add up and are disciplined to lease homes based on their underwriting criteria, not on the whims or "gut feelings".
The second is the ability to remarket other available homes.
This comes into play should the home the prospective resident apply for be taken while the application is in process. Once approved, an applicant is much more likely to pick from the available inventory of a large manager, instead of going out and beginning the process over again.
Focus:
The last point on the marketing of homes is the focus a large manager is able to devote to leasing. Small managers typically have property managers that do leasing, managing, accounting and talking with owners. At large companies, they typically have a dedicated leasing person. At Evernest, our leasing department comes to work every day with the goal of leasing homes. They have no other "more urgent" items that take their time away from leasing.
Managing
Once a property has been leased the work of a large manager has just begun. The benefits of using a large manager also stand out here.
Handling Resident Inquires:
Whether you manage 1 or 1001 homes, managing residents is a full-time business. Residents expect to be communicated with quickly when they have a need. Large managers should have a specific person that is in charge of resident communication. Small managers don't have the time or the resources to communicate with the resident. They are typically handling all aspects of this process - marketing, leasing, managing, and maintenance.
Accounting:
Tenants are getting loads of bills in the mail, shouldn't yours be one of them? The "mom and pop" manager expect the rent to be paid on the first and for the resident to remember - after all shouldn't they remember to pay their rent? Large managers don't think that is a good process, because it's not the service people are used to receiving. Heck, sometimes you might forget to pay a power bill even when you DO get a bill! Large managers should have an efficient system for billing. Most of ours are done through email. We bill the resident for the next month's rent and any other charges they may have accrued during the previous month. Again, if the resident has a stack of obligations, don't you want yours to be one of them they think about?
Services to the Resident:
Don't you want it to be as easy as possible for a resident to pay rent or submit a work order? Would it be possible that a resident would stay longer if the manager offered modern day services? These services include online rent payment and online work order submission? Large managers certainly believe this to be the case. They set up these services and others - perhaps lawn care - to make the resident's life easier and make it easier to interact with the manager.
Maintenance
Houses frequently need some TLC and large managers are in the perfect position to provide a tremendous value to their owners and their residents with regard to maintenance on the home. 24/7/365 Hour Emergency Service: What happens when the oven breaks on Thanksgiving or the air conditioning shuts down on the 4th of July? Large managers have the unique ability to offer solutions to these types of problems. When you manage a lot of houses, you don't hope something like this doesn't happen, you EXPECT it to happen! Typically large managers will have someone assigned to handle these types of calls through a rotating cell phone or we have a call service that handles these calls on our behalf. They are able to dispatch emergency vendors to handle these and other emergency situations that may arise. Residents will remember how quickly you handled these situations and will stick around longer if they are handled appropriately. Access to Multiple Vendors and Pricing Power: More vendors should mean more options on bigger projects. Large management companies have several relationships with local vendors. Additionally, it makes sense that larger managers have more pricing power with vendors. More work orders should equal better prices.
Communication
Owners want to know what is going on with their home. We recently surveyed our owners (see survey results here), and what stood out to us is how important communication is to an owner. Large managers have the ability to communicate in three ways: Online Owner Portal: Large managers have the ability to provide online data and reporting to their owners. Owners have the ability to log in and see an owner statement, paid bills and work orders. Access to this owner portal allows owners to get information from the large manager without having to go through the hassle of contacting them. The Phone: Large managers have support staff dedicated to owner communication. Should an owner need something from the large manager, they should have the ability to pick up the phone and either get someone on the phone or receive a call back very quickly. At Evernest we have a team of people who spend all day tracking answers down for owners and fielding questions. Support email: Large managers use software in their office where support emails make their way to the right department on time. This way an owner is not wondering who he should send the email to in order to get an answer...he/she simply emails the support email and the correct person answers the question. At our office, we use Helpscout as our support ticketing platform. It allows us to even see if anyone in the office has a support email they haven't addressed. This allows us to make sure that balls don't get dropped!
Conclusion
We understand that we're a bit biased, but large managers provide very unique benefits over smaller management counterparts.
When it comes to leasing, no one will get you more prospective residents to your house than a large property manager. For management, a large outfit can deal with unique situations that arise in the resident world. When it comes to maintenance, a large manager will work with quality people who have a license and insurance to work on your house. And when it comes to communication, having dedicated staff to get answers and relay important information is a must. Our advice to you is to do your homework on the front end and decide what's important to you as an owner before you choose your property manager. Like we mentioned at the beginning of this article, there are benefits to smaller managers (we've been both)...but not enough tip the scales.
