Hello Carol,
I am in the similar boat as Rahim. I am not sure I want to give control of money to property manager. I would love to know more about your system. I am closing on a condo in hamilton shorty.
Thanks,
QUOTE (CarolGarrett @ Sep 30 2008, 09:31 AM) HI Rahim, I wanted to follow up on your question as I invest in Hamilton, have two businesses in Hamilton and hang out there a lot. I will do my best to provide you with some detail as I manage my own properties.
We also own a Property Manangment company that offer services to single family home rental only. If this is of interest to you I can offer you some references.
If you own multi units, I can recommend a guy that I know others are using and are very happy with. I have done renovations for some large buildings he has worked in and he was very good at choosing tenants and has many rentals that he manages in both the north end and central Hamilton.
There are a couple of other companies around town but I am not sure of there abilities at this time but I can offer you some advice.
When I hire a Property manangment company I do the following:
I get their pricing. If they are charging me for every little item such as faxing, overtime to drive to a site, high percentage on repairs etc, I have lost before I have begun to employ them.
I get references
I check out their advertising
I interview them to find out how willing they are to work with my system. With some of my property manager in other cities, I collect the rents through direct deposit and notify the PM if the rent is late. I usually get a discount for this.
I go by some of the properties they manage and see what kind of shape they are in.
Sometimes it is easier to set up your own system and see if you can manage yourself with some assistance from local trades. Here is what I have done.
I use a 24 hour call centre in Barrie to take all of my calls. It cost me about $160.00 per month. I set up a single number reach number through bell and I use one of the extensions as a call line for the tenants. The tenants call my 1-800 number, hit ext 9 and they get a live voice 24 hours a day. The call centre has a script. They ask if it is an emergency. We have defined an emergency for them. If it is a plumbing or heating emergency, the call centre than call my plumber or heating/vent guy who is also on 24 hour call and they will fix it for me. All non-emergencies are set up as a "next business" day item.
Rents are deposited directly into my account or we use Visa. I set this up through my bank
I do quarterly or 6 month inspections depending on the tenant so I can deal with any issues
I repair my place to 100% prior to the tenant moving in so there should be a limited amount of maintenance calls
If it is a multi-unit, I get one of my tenants to deal with garbage, snow and lawn for a monthly rebate of rent paid at the end of the month.
This and other parts of our system took about 6 months to put in place, but once it was in, my costs were way down and we all had a life.
I hope I have helped a bit, if you need further clarification, ask more questions and then we can keep the dialogue going to help other REIN members.
Take Care Carol
