We understand that this is a key decision that many private landlords face. For many landlords their rental portfolio represents a significant proportion of their long-term financial investments.
At Comprendé, our doors are always open, and we are very happy to meet with you in person, to further discuss our services and how they can be tailored to best meet your property management requirements.
We at Comprendé are often asked one or more of the following questions, so we are hoping this article will provide you with useful information as you consider your options.
Key Benefits of Using a Property Manager
- Due to the complexity of legislation and compliance requirements with rental properties, detailed in the Healthy Homes Standards 2019, private landlords need to keep abreast of New Zealand’s legislative requirements, to avoid fees and penalties.
- Private landlords need to understand and meet the new specified requirements, for each individual rental property. The new stricter rules and regulations can feel somewhat daunting as they extend across all aspects of the rental property including heating, insulation, ventilation, and tenancy contract terms.
- Experienced property managers, like Comprendé, keep up to date with all the latest requirements, and have put in place systems and processes to monitor and check compliance for all properties under their care.
- If you are a landlord facing time constraints, with minimal time at your end to undertake regular property checks, outsourcing this service to an experienced team, can often provide full peace of mind.
- And it’s not just the property checks that need to be attended to. Owning a rental property includes undertaking property maintenance, scheduled visits to view the property, managing repairs, and handling all ad hoc requests from your tenants.
- For private landlords that are based out of town, or overseas, using a local property management provider can provide a ‘feet on the ground’ service. It’s usually very difficult to undertake private property management effectively if you live out of town.
- Knowing that your rental property is being well managed and cared for, by a team of experienced professionals, is often a key benefit. Like all rental investments, ensuring your property is effectively managed, maintained, and monitored with in-person viewings, is integral to its long term keep and performance.
- What’s more, knowing that your property is in safe hands, and that your compliance requirements are being met and adhered to, provides legal peace of mind for many landlords.
- As an established property management service, we have a list of trades persons (electricians, plumbers, builders) that we know and trust. We have established service contracts with our preferred team of service providers, which enables us to quickly and easily engage them for a range of property maintenance and repairs. With us, you don’t just get the expertise of our property management team, but you also get access to our established and vetted network of tradies. With us your support team is much more than our in-house team of property managers.
What Services Does A Property Manager Provide?
At Comprendé, your Property Management team provides the full and comprehensive service. This includes:
- For new tenants: advertising, tenancy screening and selection. This includes showing prospective tenants your property, screening the tenants to determine if they are a good fit, that they have good references, and have good rental history. Selecting the final preferred new tenant, and liaising with them prior to the rental commencement.
- Development of and signing of the new tenancy agreement, ensuring all parties understand their contractual requirements. This includes clearly communicating expectations regarding rental payments, and outlining the landlord’s requirements of keeping your property in a tidy and clean manner.
- During the tenancy period, undertaking regular and thorough on-site property checks. This includes giving required notice prior to each scheduled visit, when on site viewing the property with a structured checklist, taking appropriate ‘current state’ photos.
- Undertaking any required maintenance and dealing with any tenancy disputes in a timely and responsive manner.
- Liaising with the landlord for any necessary ad hoc or scheduled maintenance jobs.
- Coordinating all trades persons to the rental property, managing access keys and on-site instructions, plus undertaking follow-up checks of requested work to ensure it is completed to the standard required.
- At the end of the tenancy, doing a very thorough property check, and discussing with the tenant any issues identified. Once all parties are in agreement, arranging payment of the bond.
Why Effective Property Management Is Important?
- Your private rental property or properties will represent a key part of your long-term investment portfolio. With all properties, whether new or a little older, repairs and maintenance are all part of property ownership.
- By undertaking regular on-site visits, the property manager can often identify upcoming maintenance requirements, which when addressed early on, will have a lower cost to repair, than when left to a more critical repair point.
- With regular site visits, it ensures the property is well managed throughout the rental period. Site visits aren’t just about viewing the property. We also look at your tenants occupancy and ‘living style’, e.g. whether dampness is creeping into rooms, mould presenting in corners, or the presence of any stale or musty smells. We, as property managers, are checking to see that the tenants are looking after your property to the standard required.
- Regular and effective monitoring and management ensures the health of your property is kept on the radar. From a cost savings point of view, it will enable you to address any maintenance concerns early on in the process, prior to any major damage.
When Should You Get a Property Manager?
- Obviously, there is no actual rule for this, but we find it often depends on one of three factors. (1) The demands and busyness of the private landlord, or (2) the landlord’s desire for engaging outsourced quality property care, or (3) the need to have a professional service who fully understands all the new legal compliance requirements, as a result of the Health Homes Standards 2019.
- For some landlords they can keep abreast of the legislation changes, handling regular property checks, managing the rent, dealing with all tenant related requests, and organising property repairs. But for some, this may seem very onerous, overwhelming and just too time consuming.
- From our experience, and with the higher investment value of rental properties, it can often be triggered by the need to manage their rental investment/s in a more optimum manner. Our professional and personalised property management service strongly supports this requirement.
How Long are Our Property Management Contracts?
- At Comprendé, we offer very flexible Property Management contracts, often set for a period of 12 months and then with continuous rollover every year thereafter.
- We offer both fixed term tenancies and periodic rentals.
What Fees Do We Charge As a Property Manager?
- With us, we are not trying to be the cheapest or a ‘minimal fee with minimal service’ provider. We take great pride in providing a unique, quality, professional and fully personalised, property management service. Fully tailored to meet our individual clients’ requirements.
- This means our team is dedicated and focused on managing your property throughout the entire rental cycle. Managing it with care, consideration, with a genuine focus of adding value to your investment.
- Be assured, we offer very competitive rates, and we would be very happy to explain our rates during our initial chat.
- If you are looking for the cheapest property management service, we are pleased to say we are not that. We recognise that to provide a quality service, at a superior standard, that it requires a level of dedicated time, staff, and expertise. Plus we have developed solid and proven systems to provide our standard of service.
- As part of our robust systems, and to protect your rental income, all rental payments are held in a Trust account. What’s more, rental payments are paid directly to you assigned bank account, with funds paid out on an agreed schedule.
Property Management vs Do It Yourself
At Comprendé we provide the full level of service, from our in-house Wellington based team of property management specialists. This is what we do each and every day, and we are proud to say that we are good at it. It’s not just a job to us…it’s a quality service that we offer, with a genuine commitment to effectively manage our clients’ properties, with care.
Right from the outset, we put in place a structured management programme for your specific property, and you (the landlord) are kept fully informed throughout the process. It’s not just the property that we focus on, but also how we can support and provide the appropriate level of service to meet you, the individual landlord’s requirements.
For some landlords, the property you are passing to us, maybe a long-term rental investment; for others it may be their actual home being placed in rental, for a limited period of time.
With our wrap around service we take care of it all. Withmore than 750 rental properties in Wellington managed under our care, our proven track record, and our commitment to providing a superior level of service, you can be assured that your property is in safe hands.
The Comprendé Guarantee
We are so confident of our service standards, that we stand by our service guarantee. If you are unhappy with any aspect of our service (and in all fairness if we agree) we will happily waive your next month’s management fee.
