Need Help Finding a Property Manager to Look After Your Investment Property?

Questions to ask yourself:
• How many property managers do I want to interview? While the attached form allows you to compare 3, I recently interviewed 5 for my new property. A little exhausting to say the least!
• How will I find out who to interview? I find personal referrals from other property managers to be the best method.
• What are the most important areas to me in finding a property manager. Do you want the cheapest fees or the highest rent or is the service provided more important?

To follow is quite a long list of questions you may wish to ask a potential property manager. Have a read through it before you go to interview an agent and identify which questions are most important to you. After the questions is a form you can fill in while interviewing the agents. It’s best to start from the far right column so that you can fold that over out of sight when you start interviewing the next agent.

Structure:
• How is the property management department structured?
• Who will be your point of contact?
• How many people will you have to deal with on an ongoing basis?
• What is their contingency plan for when your point of contact is ill or on leave?
• What is the ratio of staff to properties managed?

Maintenance:
• What is their procedure?
• Do they contact the property own for all maintenance?
• Do they charge a fee to conduct maintenance?
• What percentages of their tradespeople are licensed?
• Can the owner nominate their own tradespeople?
• How are large bills paid (directly by the owner or through the rental receipts)?

Lease renewals:
It is very important to choose a company that handles their lease renewals promptly and efficiently ensuring your tenant always remains on a current lease.
• What is their procedure?
• Do they perform rental increases only upon lease renewal or during the period as well?
• Does the company charge to renew an existing lease (ie: where they don’t need to find a new tenant)

Rental arrears (tenants who are behind in rental payments):
• What is their procedure? (ie: how often do they check arrears, how many days behind does a tenant have to be before their procedure starts and what does that procedure consist of)
• At what point does the owner of the property get contacted to notify them their tenants are in arrears?

Inspections:
• How often is the property routinely inspected?
• Who conducts these inspections? (ie: is it your point of contact or someone else?)
• What points are noted on the inspection report to the owner?
• It is appropriate to view or request a sample of one of these reports.

Fees:
• What are all of the costs they charge (get written confirmation).
• Charges typically include: management fee (usually a percentage charged against all rent received), letting fee (usually a percentage or number of week’s rent charged up front when a new tenant is found), advertising (internet, newspaper etc), sundry or postage (usually a nominal fee per month), lease renewal (often charged when a lease is renewed as opposed to a new tenant being found).
• Will the owner be charged more than one letting fee in a year if there are more than one set of tenants (if the letting fee is based on a percentage of annual rent this can be costly).
• Are these fees negotiable (ie: for management of more than one property).
• It is appropriate to view or request a sample of the authority you would sign if you were to give them your property to manage.

Payments:
• By what method does the landlord get paid (direct debit to a bank account is the most common and convenient method).
• How often does the property owner get paid (weekly, fortnightly, monthly).
• What payment methods are available to tenants.

Statements:
• Does the statement get emailed, mailed or both to the owner
• It is appropriate to view or request a sample of one of these statements

Tenant screening:
• How is this performed and what does the tenant need to provide
• It is appropriate to view or request a sample of one of these statements

Advertising
• How are vacant properties marketed to the public (commonly – internet including large property portals and the real estate agent’s own website, newspaper, window display, in house database of tenants currently looking)

Estimated rental projection:
• What does the agent think the property is worth?
• What other comparable rentals on their books can they show you so that you know that their figure is realistic and achievable?

Other:
• Any other questions you think to ask
• Comments on their presentation materials etc
• Did they provide testimonials? Can they give you contact details for 5 of their current landlords who you could query about their service.

Preparation / Follow Up:
• What did the agent do before and after the presentation to stand out.

Overall rating:
• A section to rank a number of property managers

To download a free checklist to help you find the right Property Manager head to