» Property Management
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Residential Management ConceptsBy admin on October 2, 2008 | No Comments
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If you have a property you must think of its management to make the most out of it, whether you are living on it or not. If you are living on it then you would wish to make the living as comfortable as possible and hassle free. So you must be thinking of some agent to take care of the job on your behalf and all you want is to pay a fee and remain tension free. Residential management is all about this tension free living. There are agencies that take care of all your matters related to property starting from selecting the property, buying, maintenance and finally selling it off if you feel so. In short, they will provide with you with a complete package if you wish.
Now, you might feel interested in the prospect and want to know more about residential management . The first thing that you should know what the activities of these agencies is that they will start from the very beginning, which is, attracting the tenants. These companies will advertise your property to the prospective tenants over the internet, local newspapers and any other ways they deem fit. This will surely attract a few if not many. But you should know that it is better to have no tenant than having a rogue tenant. So screening of the tenants is very important. As an individual it is difficult for you to do it but to the agency that you appoint to manage your property this screening is a part of their duty. They will go through the credit history of the prospective tenant and if you wish and pay for it they will also search the criminal record of the person, if any.
As an individual you may be competent enough to negotiate a deal with your tenant. All will be well if the contract period gets over smoothly. But what if it gets into a legal scuffle? So there must be a guard against such possibilities and residential management organizations provide this guard. They have regular legal sections to look after these matters and the need will have a lesser chance of arising as the agreement with the tenant will be done on clearer terms.
Residential management is not an easy job if you have tenants on the property. The maintenance gets more difficult of you have a property for residential purpose. The tenant-owner relationship is vital in these situations. Scheduled maintenance is a very important part of an agreement and it is not always possible for an ordinary house owner to keep track of it. Moreover, it needs involvement of contractors and servicemen. Hiring them and negotiating the terms and conditions with them is also a skilled job. Usually the agencies looking after the management of the property have contractors working for them and you do not have to wrack your brain for finding a suitable one to do your job. In fact, you do not have to worry from the inspection for faults to the repairing job. The managing agency takes care of it all.
Another very important part the residential management firm play is during the disposition of the property. They try to negotiate the best deals for you so that they too can have a great commission from it. It enables you to sell of your property at a very attractive price and also without much wastage of energy.
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Landlord Services For TenantsBy admin on September 30, 2008 | No Comments
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When letting out a property for the purpose of rent the landlord services have to be provided by the owner of the property to the tenant. These include providing certain basic amenities along with some special amenities that are demanded by the tenant. The owner should comply with certain rules and regulations along with the client when he enters into a legal agreement with his tenant on renting out his property. He should provide basic amenities like clean and hygienic premises to his tenants. He should also take care of any faulty electrical circuitry that can be dangerous to the people moving about in that place.
The tenants should be provided with a safe and secure place for dwelling. Landlord services include providing room air-conditioning in certain cases, heating, ventilation and landscaping. Usually the owners of the property do not include the offering of any of these services in the clauses of their contract. If the tenant specifically asks for any services then the owner provides them with the desired service. This is done to the advantage of the owner who does not want to take the initiative in offering services as this will lead to his spending some money on these. The owner generally prefers the tenants to insure themselves for their personal property when they are in occupation of the property of the owner.
Landlord Services include providing a number of maintenance services. These include taking care of the structural components of the building along with its common areas. If there is any service that the owner cannot provide or wants to stop he can remove the clause that states the provision of such services from the lease document. Moreover, if the tenant tends to utilize the resources provided by the owner for a longer duration than that specified, the owner can ask the tenant to pay extra charges for that resource. For example, many tenants tend to use more electricity than the allotted quota in which case they might be asked by the owner to pay extra charges.
The landlord services offered by the owner can be minimized by not making many of the services offered mandatory. The rights of the tenants to have access over certain services can also be controlled. The tenant expects the owner to offer a number of services under the mandatory section of the lease agreement, without him having to pay anything extra from his pocket for any service. The tenant expects to have complete control over the portion of the property offered to him. The tenant also expects to be enlightened on any of the service related issues and the exact amount of money he is spending for each and every service rendered to him.
The landlord services offered invoke expectations in the tenant to see the owner following the legal clauses set in the agreement to the letter. The tenants expect the owner to get all the modifications and the repair works done to the property and pay for the expenditure incurred. The tenant expects the owner to take the responsibility of insuring all the modifications and enhancements made to the property. The tenant may also ask the owner to constantly make improvements to damaged portions of the property occupied by him. The owner is also expected to provide first class services with regard to maintenance of elevators, air conditioners, humidifiers etc.
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Homeowner Association ManagementBy admin on September 29, 2008 | No Comments
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Managing housing complexes is different from managing individual houses. Housing complexes are usually administered by housing boards that are managed by homeowner association management committees. These committees work towards the enhancement of the worth of the housing complexes by providing excellent facilities. Nowadays there are a lot of firms offering these facilities and hence there is a fierce competition amongst them for providing the best facilities in the shortest duration of time possible. It depends upon the housing committee to select a firm that offers the best facilities possible.
There are a large number of firms that provide impeccable facilities to the housing as well as business communities. They are well equipped, have competent staff and use state of the art managerial techniques. These firms work with the purpose of providing maximum profits at minimum expenditure. Many of the firms have specialized proprietary management systems. Many homeowner association management organizations are usually competent enough to manage housing complexes that have around 200 to 500 individual houses. They strictly abide by the laws governing the maintenance of assets in the state. However, managing a housing community is more difficult owing to the complexity born out of diverse needs, in comparison to managing an individual housing unit.
Formulation of general rules of administration and their implementation is not all that easy. Different people have different necessities and when a law is formulated, ideally the problems of each and every individual house should be considered. Hence, these rules formulated by the homeowner association management organization require a lot of money expenditure. In their commitment towards providing excellent client satisfaction to the owners and the residents of the housing complex, the managing staff may take undue work stress upon themselves. The staff of the firms that manage the housing complexes also provides assistance in getting housing insurances to the owners of the individual houses. They also conduct periodic audits on the processes and activities of the housing complexes so that an optimum quality is maintained.
Many of the homeowner association management organisations work on a global basis. They cater to many clients and maintain the same quality of performance. They can customize the facilities that they offer to the specific requirements of the clients. Their operations are divided into three categories. The first category operations are concerned with daily activities, the second category of operations are concerned with financial administration and the third category of operations deal with emergency duties.
The specific activities of the homeowner association management organization that are included in the first category of operations are checking if the housing board is following all the rules that were formulated for its administration and finding out the reasons and remedy for any deviation, checking for any rectifications to be made, keeping the members of the housing committees updated with the latest news from the assets industry, and addressing the issues and conflicts of the housing committees.
The financial administration part consists of preparing financial statements on a monthly basis that reflect the income and expenditure of the housing community. It also includes making bills using tools for convenient and fast preparation of reports. The firms also prepare tax statements and also devise strategies to keep the tax expenditure to a minimum. The association ensures that all monetary conflicts are resolved under legal supervision and no malpractices take place. They also make efficient financial strategies for the future.
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Challenges of Commercial Property ManagersBy admin on September 25, 2008 | No Comments
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Managing an asset meant for business purposes can be quite a challenging task and is best managed by commercial property managers who have excellent skills in this. They have highly specific job descriptions. They are expected to impeccably manage the asset that they are entrusted with and they should always work keeping in view the welfare of the owner of the asset. Their working methodologies should be such that there is a maximum profit financially. There is minimum wastage of resources and protection of the valuable parts of the asset already in existence.
To work as commercial property managers , people need to possess formal certificates in managing assets. They should also be well versed in the economical and financial studies related to managing assets. They should be well informed about the assets industry scenario in general and should come up with some profitable solutions for the investors. They should show some beneficial new ventures to the investors and also see to it that if the owner of an asset wants to dispose it off, it should fetch him a good amount of money. A candidate with a minimum of three to four years of experience is generally considered ideal for the post.
The commercial property managers should be well versed with the laws governing the owner and tenant relations, the rules for renting out a building or an individual house, the current market value of an asset and the rules that they have to follow in order to maintain the buildings. The assets managers should be able to manage the building in the most cost effective manner for the owner. They should have good contacts with the building maintainers and should be able to negotiate deals with them at the least possible prices. They should be able to guide the residents of the building at the time of any crisis and also procure the necessary assistance at the moment. He has to take up some of the responsibilities of the owner. For example, collecting the rents on time and keeping a track of all defaulters. He might also have to represent the owner in court in the event of any disputes related to assets.
The work of the commercial property managers might appear to be highly monotonous because it involves a lot of routine activities, but in reality a certain amount of creativity is required to efficiently manage the show. The asset managing professionals need to be innovative in formulating business concepts so that the owner of the asset is benefited by them. They need to conduct market research on any new feature that they want to introduce and scrutinize the situation well. By doing so, they should be able to secure some good business opportunities for the investors. They should be able to accurately analyze the future market trends and make reliable predictions for the investors.
The commercial property managers should have the ability to take correct decisions regarding issues related to assets and drive the assets business to a grand success for the investor. They should be able to develop efficient business strategies to successfully maneuver through any crisis. They should know the most favorable time for the investor to make investments and also the best time for him to dispose of an asset that does not seem to have any market worth enhancement prospects.
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More About Management PropertiesBy admin on September 22, 2008 | No Comments
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Management properties are those pieces of land or buildings, either those that are used for living purposes or those that are used by an organization for their business purposes, but are not taken care of by the owner of the same. The owner just does not have the time to look after the day to day up keeping of the same and hence they employ a third party well versed in looking after the well being of a building. The third party, it might be an origination or a person, will take care of all the happenings of the building in question. He has to be extremely proficient in his work since the same requires that he does lots of tasks at the same time.
He has to take care that the management properties under his care is well maintained and this includes the building being well painted, the furnishings being tip top, the electrical fittings being in working order etc. Apart from that he has to take care of all the paper work of the building he is looking after. There are taxes to be paid to the government for the land and apart from that there are the water are power bills which have to be paid on time to ensure that their supply is not disrupted. In case the properties that the agent is looking after is being used for purposes that is living only, then the agent will also have to collect the monthly payment from all the people staying in the building.
At the end of the month after deducting the costs required for maintaining the building, the remainder of the monthly payment received from the people staying in the house, is given by the agent in charge of the management properties to the person who is the proprietor of the building. The agent who is looking after the management properties has also to take care of many other things like checking whether the building is fully occupied or not. If there are not sufficient occupants they have to release ads in the papers about space being available in the building. Once the prospective occupants start arriving, these agents have to screen them to see that no unruly person gets a chance to stay in the building.
There are many other legal aspects as well associated with a building and these too have to be looked after the agent in charge of that building. The best part of management properties that are looked after by agents is that the proprietor of that building does not have to keep an eye out on the same. The agent will do all that is required and, if necessary, contact the proprietor of the same on a daily basis via phone and tell them of the happening of the day.
Generally these agents have freedom to undertake any small repairs like changing a broken window sill, or replacing a broken fence without consulting the proprietor of the building. At the end of the month they submit the entire bill to the proprietor and they reimburse the costs. If you have a building that is lying unused, you can hire an agent to take care of the same and earn a good sum of money each month from the persons who will be residing in the same.
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Guidelines For Tenant EvictionBy admin on September 18, 2008 | No Comments
Though the owner of a house commands superior powers with matters related to his house, neither he nor the realestate management professional that he employs to take care of his house has the right to evict a tenant without sufficient reason. There are certain factors that the owner and the managing professional should bear in mind before proceeding to take any action:
Every city, town or locality has some governing body that has set rules for the owners and the tenants and any deviation from them can be considered illegal by the offended party. The tenant can challenge the owner or the managing team in court if any unjust behavior is meted out to him. The rules, however, may vary from place to place.
The owner or the realestate management team does not have the right to evict an occupant of their property based on their race, gender, physical disability status etc. if such problems crop up with the tenant during his tenure of occupancy. For example, if the owner gives accommodation to a person belonging to a racial group other than his own, and in the future there is a conflict between the two racial groups and the owner and the tenant are not directly involved in the conflict, then the owner does not have the right to ask the occupant of his house to leave.
The owner or the realestate management team cannot throw out the belongings of the tenant or cut off any basic amenities for not clearing his monthly dues on time without giving the tenant an opportunity to disclose the reasons for his delay. Any notice or legal action should not be generally taken if the tenant misses out on his monthly dues just once. Action is usually taken against regular defaulters. In any case, they should be issue a notice with sufficient time in hand for vacating, to the tenant.
If the tenant adamantly occupies a house without meeting the set criteria for tenancy, even after being issued a notice, the owner has the right to take legal action against him and the realestate management can help him in making the necessary arrangement and getting a good attorney for the owner. The assets managing professional arrange an attorney for the tenant also if he finds that the tenant is being genuine. However, the assets managing professionals usually take an impartial stand in such circumstances and try to settle the dispute between the owner and the tenant by educating them on the existing laws of the place where the house is located.
The owners who have a genuine reason for asking their tenants to leave will generally win the lawsuits that they have made against their tenants. They obtain the necessary permission from the court to ask the tenants to leave in the shortest duration of time possible. The realestate management can represent the owner in court if the owner is unable to attend the court hearings due to some reason. If the owner provides an accommodation that is below standard, for example, an accommodation that does not have adequate electric or water supply, and he refuses to provide the amenities even on being requested by the tenant, then it is as good as legally evicting the tenant. In such a situation the tenant has the right to terminate the contract and leave the premises whenever he wants to.
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Advantages of Computerized Rental ManagementBy admin on September 13, 2008 | No Comments
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Managing property involves performing a lot of calculations, entering quite a number of details and handling numerous enquires pertaining to clients amongst other laborious and monotonous operations. The assets managing professional gets totally bored by the laborious and routine tasks that are allotted to him everyday. Keeping these and other efficiency impeding factors in view, the computerized rental property manager was designed. It is a hundred percent workplace assistant for the assets managing professional. Here are certain things that the assets managing executive can expect this software to do for him.
• Usually an asset supervising executive has to keep tracking the tenant monthly payment pattern. He has to observe which tenants are being punctual with their payments and which of them are delaying the payments. This can be quite a time taking task. By feeding some relevant information into the assets managing software, the assets managing professional can view the details of the people who have made their payments on time and the tenants who are yet to pay. From this he can have an idea of the regular defaulters.
• The computerized rental property manager enables the assets managing professional to get the exact number of accommodations that will be available for hire in the near future. The assets managing professional can also see the tenancy statistics of an accommodation on hire for a specific period of time.
• Maintain the tenant and owner data in the manual recording methodology can result in the office space being flooded with heaps of files. The software saves the trouble by providing an electronic database that has the capacity of recording the details of clients, several times greater in number, than the ones whose details are recorded in the manual procedure.
• The computerized rental property manager allows for performing complicated operations on the data stored in its databases. It enhances the work efficiency of the assets managing professional by making automatic updates in all the corresponding details whenever a new feature is entered or any modification is made in the electronic database. In the manual system, these changes have to be made by the assets managing professional or any other executive and it would prove to be highly laborious and time taking.
• The computerized rental property manager software can be used to make financial and business calculations for an investor. Its database has information about the best ways in which the investor can enhance the market value of his asset. It also yields in information about the taxes and other expenses the have to be borne by the owner of the property over a given period of time.
• The software has a system of categorizing its constituent data and instructions into neat modules. This sort of immaculate arrangement is highly difficult to implement in the manual systems. This enhances the ease of operation for the assets managing professional.
• It should be borne in mind that the assets managing executives are very busy individuals doing onsite work and they usually do not have the time to make reports. The computerized rental property manager can make excellent reports as and when required by the assets managing executive. Hence he is saved the trouble of making complicated reports.
There are many assets managing software available in the market and the selection of such software should depend on the utility of the features offered and not on the number or sophistication of the features.
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How To Intrigue Real Estate BuyersBy admin on September 8, 2008 | No Comments
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Selling a product is a tough affair and real estate is no exception. To capture the market for selling an asset, one has to make it salable by making improvements in a number of ways. The improvements usually include renovations or adding new utility features. The ultimate purpose is to impress prospective buyers with the looks and features.
When a prospective buyer is invited to take a look at the asset that is for sale, a number of small factors need to be paid attention to. The first thing is that in the present times, when there is an abundance of impressive assets in the market, the owner of an asset needs to make his asset truly outstanding in looks and features. The owner should keep in mind that the prospective buyers are busy individuals and they form impressions within minutes. The real estate may be having a lot of plus points but if these are not presented in an attractive manner, the buyer will drift away and sadly enough the owner will not get another chance to present his asset well. Hence, first impressions contribute largely to the salability of an asset.
When it comes to creating first impressions, it is not necessary to overload the asset with a large number of features. One can start with satisfying the most basic criteria of making an asset salable. One such criterion is to first keep the asset and its premises neat and hygienic. If the real estate is a terrain without any construction on it, the job of maintaining it becomes very easy. The owner needs to keep mowing out any growth of weeds and vegetation and see to it that stray animals do not litter the place with their excreta. Building a fence around the asset is recommended to keep away vagabonds from making unauthorized makeshift shelters on it.
Tidying up houses is can be quite complicated and time taking. To start off with, one needs to remove all unwanted stuff. This is where many people take the wrong decisions. It might sound funny, but there are people who retain old and broken furniture, torn off books and other things as they develop a sort of attachment to them over time. Old is gold, but it definitely does not make any sense in accumulating rubbish in the house. For that matter, even costly things give an ugly appearance if haphazardly placed. Arranging things neatly and in a meaningful way will give the real estate a commendable appearance and makes it habitable. Modern research shows staying in cluttered up places is not only bad for physical health, but for mental health also.
While discussing neatness, one should also consider an associated factor, and that is keeping the asset and its premises hygienic. Pesticides and insecticides should be used generously to keep the asset and the premises free of disease causing organisms. Clogged drains should be cleared. Water tanks should be cleaned frequently and periodically as stagnant water tends to be the breeding grounds for a lot of pathogenic organisms like mosquitoes that cause potentially lethal diseases like malaria, dengue and brain fever. The pipeline network of the real estate should be free of leakages as this can contaminate the water flowing through these pipes. Faulty pipelines should be identified and repaired promptly.
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Fine Tuning Rental ManagementBy admin on September 6, 2008 | No Comments
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Owing to the increase in leased assets, many assets managing firms are taking up rental management these days. They take up the responsibility of getting tenants for the owner, collecting the monthly payments from them, and settling any disputes between the owner and the tenant. Both the owner and the tenants are, in a sense, clients of the firms. Nowadays, client satisfaction is of prime importance and this principle holds true for the assets business as well.
Many assets firms offer what they promise to their clients, but many of them do not. Amongst those who do not provide what they promise, there are the ones who do so because they are fraudulent and there are the ones who do so because they are genuinely unaware of the fact that they are not able to deliver what they have promised. As the behavior of a rental management firm belonging to the former category is easily understood, the behavior of a firm belonging to the latter category can be analyzed.
Every firm has its own definition and prescribed rules for delivering client satisfaction. But it is not necessary that what a firm thinks as good quality client satisfaction is viewed or graded in the same way by a client. For example, the assets firm may promise to prompt response on its helpline. Now, the executives of the firm may respond to a querying client 20 minutes after he makes a call. Now, owing to the querying client traffic, this time duration might be considered as prompt by the rental management firm executive, but to the client this will appear as a much delayed response. Hence it is always better for the assets firm and its clients to clarify themselves on such issues, so that there are no problems and frictions in their dealings.
Many of the assets firms have written rules about client satisfaction and they pass them down to their staff in a mechanical manner. It is not necessary that the executives dealing with the clients understand the instructions the way the management intends them to. For example, the firm might expect its executives to show cent per cent commitment to its clients. Different executives might interpret the meaning of commitment in different ways. Some take it as presenting themselves in the best possible way to the clients, while others lay stress on serving them reliably on time. By holding training sessions for the executives the rental management firm can clarify all the criteria that come under the commitment category.
It is a good practice for the assets managing firms to take initiative in getting feedback about the level of client satisfaction that they are providing by sending agents. Many business houses are already sending agents, called hired shoppers to their retail outlets to assess the level of client satisfaction being delivered. The assets managing firms should also adopt a similar methodology to understand if what they are delivering to their clients is making them happy. The rental management firm should use the feedback that they get to improve their client satisfaction measures and hence retain their existing clients and win new clients. However good a firm may be otherwise, it is the clients who run the business by making it or breaking it. Hence they should not be taken for granted, even though the firm may be a well established and reputed one.
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Property Management Salary ConflictBy admin on August 30, 2008 | No Comments
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One of the biggest dilemmas that the owner of a land or house can have is about his necessity of a property manager and the correct pay that he should be giving him. There are certain factors that have to be considered before deciding upon the pay of an assets managing executive.
How to determine the pay of your manager
• The pay of the asset managing executive depends on the qualifications and experience of the executive and it varies from one area to another, the size of the asset and the nature of work. For managing large houses in posh localities a high pay package is given. The pay also depends on the type of asset that is to be taken care of. Managing commercial assets is more paying than the residential ones for the property manager as it involves more complicated work.
• The pay for the executives who take care of the assets can also be determined by the number of tasks that the owner wants to assign to them. Obviously if the owners want to entrust these executives with many tasks then they should be prepared to pay them more. An executive who gets tenants for the owner and collects the monthly pay is definitely paid more than the one who does only the latter job.
• The pay or commission that a property manager gets is determined by the overall monthly payment that the owner gets from his tenants. It is generally calculated as a percentage of the overall monthly payments given by the tenants to the owner of the house. Hence, if an assets professional wants to make some good money he should always try to find work in areas where the monthly payments made by the tenants for occupying the assets are reasonably high. Information about the pay for assets executives in different areas is available on the internet.
• Some commercial organizations give benefits along with the salaries or commissions to the property manager they employ. They give them transportation, residency and medical allowances. Many of the residential and commercial assets owners also give attractive incentives to the assets executives for bringing them more and more tenants. These incentives encourage the executives to perform well and remain committed to their employers.
• The pay of the assets executive staying in the premises of the asset is determined by the type of accommodation he is provided. If he gets a good accommodation then he can adjust for a slightly lesser pay otherwise he can wish to stay at some other place and demand extra pay. If the property manager has taken up work at a particular site on a part time basis, then it is not mandatory for the owner to provide accommodation for the executive who in turn cannot demand accommodation allowance. However, the executive can always ask for some extra pay for some of his expenses, like food, while he is on duty. The executives who work part time can also be paid on an hourly basis if the number of hours they work per day is not fixed.
• The manager who has to protect an asset from destructive neighbors, thefts, calamities and who has to take up regular repair or modification work has to be given a higher pay for performing these tasks in comparison to those who take up regular maintenance work only.
