2 Reasons to Have a Property Manager

If you are moving out of state but have decided to not sell your house, you may decide to rent it out. The problem with having a rental property when you live out of state is that, if there is a problem, it can be hard to handle it from hundreds or thousands of miles away. One option you have it to hire a property manager. 

A property manager is a person who acts as an intermediary between you and your tenants. There are a number of places that you can find a property manager. One is if you decide to list your home to rent through a real estate agent, they may have people who are willing to act as property managers for you. There are also agencies that specialize in property managers. There are a lot of reasons that you want to hire a property manager. 

Screening

One thing that they can do for you is to screen potential tenants. You want to make sure that your tenants are going to take care of your house. You always want to make sure that they are going to be able to pay their rent on time. Your property manager will have your prospective tenants fill out an application with references on it. The manager will talk to those references, including prior landlords, to see what they think of the tenants. The manager may also run a credit check on the prospective tenants so that you have a better background on them. 

Evictions

Unfortunately, sometimes you have to evict a tenant. When that happens, it can talk a lot of work. There are potential court dates that you have to attend and many other parts of the process. However, if you have a property manager, they are going to be able to handle everything. That includes giving the tenant a notice to quit, filing the legal paperwork, serving the tenant, and dealing with any law enforcement officials that may be necessary. Depending on your state, that process can take 90 days, or even longer. That could be a lot of dates where you have to go back to another city in another state, costing you even more money, if you didn't have a property manager right there to handle it.

A property manager can make owning a rental property much easier, especially if you are a long-distance landlord. For more information about rental properties, talk to a realtor like Keller Williams Realty.