There are certain responsibilities that will need to be handled on a regular basis when owning a rental property. While it may seem daunting to manage both a property and tenants yourself, it’s easier than you think when you have the right tools and resources to reference.
In this article, we explain the main areas of focus for a do-it-yourself (DIY) landlord, and how to effectively self-manage your rental property.
What Are the Responsibilities of a DIY Landlord?
As a landlord, you’ll be responsible for managing three areas of the renting process:
Tenant Management
Managing tenants is an essential part of managing a rental. In addition to ensuring they’re abiding by the terms in the lease agreement, you also need to be well-informed on handling certain situations in a way that complies with local landlord-tenant laws.
For example, some states require landlords to offer a grace period before charging late fees to tenants and supplying a past-due rent notice. Failing to abide by local ordinances can result in a legal situation and may affect your reputation as a landlord.
Property Management
All states require landlords to keep the property safe for tenants to live in and address property maintenance-related issues promptly. For that reason, it’s important to have funds available to address significant repairs quickly, conduct regular inspections, and have a maintenance tracking system for tenants to escalate issues.
Financial Management
As you collect rental fees from tenants, you will need to manage rental property accounting to track how much income you’ve generated with each rental. Payments to track are rent payments, security deposits or move-in fees, pet fees, utilities, and other monthly fees tenants must pay.
How to Manage a Rental Property Yourself
As a landlord, it’s important to have a concrete plan on how you’ll handle the different parts of the rental process. Here are seven steps to follow to help guide you along the process of managing a property yourself.
1. Create a Rental Property Business Plan
Take time to create a rental property business plan that outlines your goals, your market, your business model, and your strategic plan. If it’s your first time managing a rental property, it’s important to determine how your rental business will operate and how you’ll want to handle the different parts of the rental process.
The information on your business plan can also highlight the financials you’ll need to prepare for before, during, and after renting out a property.
2. Prepare Your Finances to Cover Operating Expenses
Managing a rental property comes with operating expenses that need to be covered throughout the year. Your expenses will generally include advertising, cleaning and maintenance repairs, landlord insurance premiums, property taxes, and other professional fees.
Determine how much you’ll need to cover in expenses each month to properly forecast your total costs. This number can then be used to help you determine a rent price that’s competitive, fair, and sufficient to cover your expenses.
Pro tip: Have a savings account specifically for rental property-related expenses in case your rental income is not enough to cover upcoming expenses.
3. Market Your Property
Part of managing a rental is finding and screening prospective tenants, which begins with listing your rental. You can manually publish your listing across various sites or leverage a landlord software platform like Avail to accomplish help you advertise your rental across the top rental sites with one click.
Through Avail, you can create a rental listing that will automatically post to a dozen of popular rental sites, allowing you to generate leads by getting your listing in front of millions. If you struggle to write a listing on your own, Avail also provides auto-generated listing titles and descriptions based on the details of the property.
4. Collect Rent From Tenants
Rent payments will be your primary source of income from your rental property, so it’s essential to make this process seamless for yourself and your tenants. An easy way to do this is by setting up online rent payments through a rent collection app.
It’s worth noting that certain platforms like Zelle, Venmo, or PayPal are not intended for rent collection. While they may be convenient and common for personal use, these apps often have rules against usage for rental payments, and using them to collect rent can result in a terms of use violation. Additionally, they can be unreliable due to limited payment protection.
Alternatively, collecting rent online with Avail allows tenants to securely send payments that will deposit directly into your account. You can also request payments, set up automatic rent reminders, and get next-day rent payments with FastPay when you upgrade to Unlimited Plus.
5. Create a Process for Handling Maintenance Repairs
Maintenance issues are often unexpected, so it’s important to create a process for handling repairs to avoid future issues. Neglecting maintenance requests from tenants can violate their renter rights and result in withheld rent or a lawsuit.
You can manage maintenance requests with Avail to log repair costs, images of the repair issue, and information on the contractor that fixed the issue. Tenants can also flag maintenance issues through their tenant dashboard, which will automatically show on your account.
6. Establish a Record Keeping Process
Becoming a landlord will require you to keep a record of all your rental income, your expenses, and active lease agreements. Launching a rental business without a record-keeping process can make filing your taxes difficult and leave more room for issues, especially if you have more than one active lease agreement.
Luckily, Avail provides free reports to help you stay on top of your business without having to use more than one platform. Access your tenant roster, rental property accounting dashboard, maintenance requests, late payments, and active lease agreements all for free through your landlord dashboard.
7. Set Reminders for Important Dates
Depending on your local landlord-tenant laws, you will need to determine whether or not you want to provide your tenant with lease renewal options. This typically needs to be done 90 days before the lease expires, but this varies depending on your state.
If they agree to renew the lease, you will need to create a new lease agreement with the updated rent price and rental agreements. On the other hand, tenants that do not want to renew will need to let you know 60 days before the lease expires to give you enough time to turnover an apartment.
What to Know About Remote Property Management
There may be instances where you may want to explore long-distance real estate investing, but it’s important to consider the risks involved with remote property management. Since you’re not in close proximity to the property, you may want to consider hiring a property manager to be the go-to person for your tenants. This will add an additional operating expense, but they can help ensure your tenants have assistance when they need it.
If you decide to hire a property manager to help you manage your rental properties from out of state, you can create an Avail account for them to use to see what payments have been collected and any new maintenance issues.
Alternatively, some property management companies offer services as needed. Choosing this path means you can outsource specific tasks, such as only finding a new tenant for the property. This affords flexibility in deciding what you need assistance with, while also saving more money compared to hiring a full-time property manager.
Streamline the Rental Process With Avail
By following the steps listed above, you can smoothly self-manage a rental property. Create an Avail account today to streamline the rental process for all of your rental properties and keep everything organized on one platform.
For even more assistance with managing your rental property business, Avail offers a free library of resources. Find forms, view state-specific landlord-tenant laws, access in-depth guides, and more — everything you need to manage your rentals like a pro.
