The property manager will be taking on significant responsibilities with the owner’s real estate. You will be effectively handing your property over to another.  It is important to look at the contract, at a minimum it must:

1. Name all parties to the contract
2. The legal property address
3. Define the responsibilities of the manager and the owner
4. Enumerate all  fees and commissions for leasing or real estate sales.
5. Define the term of the contract
6. Both parties must sign and date the contract

Agency — What Is It? Continue reading this post

Many property owners that would like to sell now find they have to hold and manage. If you own far from where you live or you simply aren’t interested in managing a second business, you should consider a professional property management.

Does One Size Fit All?

No. Property Management companies come in all sizes, some manage 20,000 units and others 500. Many property management companies are a small or family business’s. A large management company should have more resources available, but service may not be personal and it’s easy to get lost there unless you have a large portfolio. That’s the first point to consider; which size management company will give you personal service.

Interview smaller companies that would bend over backwards for your business. You may get better service and price leverage.  If you choose this route, try to assess whether the company can absorb new business quickly, it’s a litigious business and they must be responsive day one.

If you have a single family home or a smaller rental property it’s just not that attractive to many companies. Not much income and although a larger company may welcome you, they may not give you much service. You may find that suddenly, you have many more little maintenance items than ever before as they maximize income within house maintenance and repairs.

How Do You Find Them?

Word of mouth is best. If you don’t have a personal resource then: Continue reading this post

The San Francisco Rent Board sets price controls on residential housing effectively acting as a price ceiling, except when an apartment becomes vacant. Then the owner/manager can bring rents up to market rate. If the unit was occupied for 10 or even 20 years, eventual increases to the prevailing market rate represents a spike in cash flow.

In fact when a building with long standing tenants comes up for sale it’s a great selling point. It’s not hard to see future value when you are looking at a few units renting for $350 that would easily rent in today’s market for $1,500.

Not Everything Is Rent Controlled

In San Francisco, limits to rent increases are mandated and administered by the Rent Board with some exceptions:

1. New Construction: Mandated by state law, all building constructed after June of 1979 are exempted
2. Subsidized Housing: such as HUD housing projects.
3. Dorms, monastery’s and nunnery’s
4. Residential Hotels: If you have less than 28 days of continuous tenancy.

How it Works Continue reading this post

We’d like to welcome Howard Bell of YourPropertyPath.com to our team of HomeGain Guest Bloggers!

Howard holds a certification in financial planning and offered goal oriented financial planning and investment advice. Today he enjoys applying these business development, business planning and sales strategy skills to the property management arena for the last five years.

He is also an active blogger of macro economic discussions and Trade talk for the San Francisco real estate industry. Howard’s blogs are full of news, rants and strong opinions about real estate markets.

He  is the editor/founder of a real estate information site with over 450 articles in 42 categories, helping people deal with the complexity of owning and managing.

Look for Howard’s first blog post later today!