Before you go down this path and manage your own property, there are some things you should know:
- Requirements – Nevada requires the owner or manager to be within 60 miles of the property. If you get a clever tenant who knows this, they can take you to the cleaners. We don’t provide “tenant placement only” to owners outside of Las Vegas. The is primarily because those owners are always calling us for repairs and problems.
- Tenant Screening – Unless you have been screening tenants for the last 30 years, you probably can’t match our skills and tools used to filter out the professional rent dodgers and tenants who are likely to destroy your property.
- Evictions – If you are not familiar with recent changes in the law, you are in for the ride of your life. The judges are more liberal now and the laws are more favorable to tenants than they used to be. If you happen to end up with a professional rent dodger, you are going to lose a few months of rent. Time and again we see owners lose 3 months of rent trying to save a little on the monthly expense.
- Expenses – Unless you have reliable vendors, there is a very good chance you will get poor service and poor results. Las Vegas is full of amateurs and finding good vendors at a fair price are super hard to find. You can’t have ours.
- Income – We have found most owners who attempt to manage their own property actually lose money in the long run. Here some examples:
- Rent Increases – Most self managed owners neglect to modify their leases every year and end up leaving thousands of dollars on the table.
- Late Fees – Unless you have a mechanism for charging and enforcing late fees, you are losing revenue and tenant discipline.
- Misc Fees – HOA fines, repairs and a host of other details are lost to most self managed owners.
You don’t know what you don’t know.
There are so many factors and situations related to managing properties, it requires books to cover them all. If you really really want to risk your property to your skill set, you should at least improve it. My book “For A Few Properties More” is only $8 and will save you that much in your first week. 30 years of property management experience went into that book and I made it fun to read.