Robert S. Griswold - Property Management Kit For Dummies

Keep your sights on the bull’s-eye for important advice and critical insight into the best practices in property management.

This icon highlights the land mines that both novice and experienced rental property owners need to avoid.

This icon flags real-life anecdotes from my many years of experience and mistakes. When you’ve managed more than 560,000 rental units in 340 years, you see some interesting situations. Now, I share them with you.

This icon flags specialized business facts and data that are interesting as background data but not essential for you to know. You can skip paragraphs marked by this icon if you're not interested in tangential information.

In addition to the forms included here in the book, you can go online to find many more forms that are going to make your life a lot easier as a residential rental property owner. Here's the address:

www.wiley.com/go/propertymanagementkitfd4e

I include a state-by-state reference to the state laws that pertain to residential rental housing. You'll also find a real estate glossary and resources that are available from the Institute of Real Estate Management (IREM), the National Apartment Association (NAA), and the National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM).

This book also has a helpful online cheat sheet with easy-to-access tips for property managers. Just go to Dummies.com and type “Property Management Kit For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the search box.

To get benefit from any great resource book, you must read it! This book is designed for experienced and seasoned landlords, as well as rookies who still think that all tenants are nice and prompt with rent payments and should be invited over for Thanksgiving supper.

Whether you’re contemplating owning residential rental real estate, looking to fine-tune your proven landlord secrets, or facing financial ruin at the hands of the Tenant from Hell, this book offers chapter after chapter of solid rental property management advice, for everyone from new rental property owners who have a single rental home or condo to owners of hundreds of units. The methods I present are effective for all sizes and types of residential rental properties. The book explains how to attract qualified prospects; select and screen tenants; maintain and increase the rental rate; and handle security deposits, rental contracts, broken water pipes, late rents, tenants who overstay (and don’t pay). Find the topic you want to know more about, and start reading right there.

Everything is manageable and workable — if you know what you’re doing!

Property Management Kit For Dummies, 4th Edition, helps you protect your investment and maintain your sense of humor, as well as your sanity, as you deal with one of the most unpredictable professions: property management. Consider this book to be your property management bible, written just for you.

Part 1

IN THIS PART …

Figure out whether you have what it takes to manage residential rental property.

Discover what you need to know if you’re taking over ownership of a residential rental property.

Work with the current tenants, and inform them of your policies and procedures.

Chapter 1

IN THIS CHAPTER

Looking at the pros and cons of residential property management

Exploring the different types of residential real estate

Surveying the steps involved in renting your property

Walking through the day-to-day details of property management

The key to long-term success and wealth-building through real estate ownership lies in the foundation you acquire as a hands-on property manager. Some people start by managing rental properties owned by someone else and gain a great deal of experience that they can use for their portfolio. Other people learn from trial and error — but that can be expensive.

There are many positive reasons for becoming a rental property owner or manager and just as many ways of doing so. Perhaps you’ve saved up the down payment to purchase your first small rental unit and hope to see your investment grow over the years as a nice retirement nest egg or a supplement to your current income. Maybe you want to invest in a medium-size apartment building and build some equity as well as rental income to supplement or replace your current income. Perhaps you’ve inherited Aunt Gertrude’s run-down cottage and need to find a good tenant who’ll care for it and pay the rent on time. Maybe you recently closed on your new primary residence, only to find that selling your existing home isn’t as easy as the real estate agent promised. Or perhaps you’ve had to move across the country to find a suitable job but want to return to your home in the future to avoid getting priced out of that market years later when you return.

Whether you plan to become a full- or part-time property manager, you need to know what you’re doing — practically, legally, and financially. This chapter serves as a jumping-off point into the rental property world. Here, you can find useful info, tips, and checklists suitable for novice or seasoned rental property managers. So get ready for some pragmatic and realistic sage advice from the tenant trenches to help you handle situations when they arise!

Rental property owners provide consumers a product known as shelter. Property managers, who either work for themselves or as the agents for an unrelated third-party owner, handle the day-to-day aspects of making sure that the provided shelter meets their customers’ needs. Put another way, as either a property manager or property owner, your obligation is to provide your customers a decent place to live in exchange for the payment of rent. Although property management doesn’t seem very complex, you can avoid the many mistakes unprepared property managers make by knowing what you’re getting into.

The following sections give you a quick overview of the pros and cons of property management. Chapter 2provides more in-depth analysis of these advantages and disadvantages for a residential rental property owner to help you determine whether self-management of your rental property is the right choice for you.