If you manage a property or have investments in a property that you lease to tenants, your day can be swamped with responsibilities. Between scheduling a property assessor, keeping track of tenants late on their rent, and making sure your newest property is maintained, you have your hands full. Instead of letting tasks fall by the wayside or trying to handle everything yourself, consider hiring a virtual assistant for property managers to help get you organized and make progress on your backlog of undone tasks.
How a Virtual Assistant Can Help
Between the daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly tasks you have to keep track of and complete, there isn’t a shortage of places where your virtual property management assistant can help.
1. Paperwork: Creating leases, performing tenant background checks, drafting memos… the paperwork that you need to fill out to maintain a property can seem endless. A virtual assistant can handle most, if not all, of this paperwork. You can also ask a virtual assistant to write, organize, and track property maintenance orders, update tenant information, and follow up with tenants regarding unpaid charges or overdue rent. Use project management software like Trello or Asana to keep track of what’s been done and what still needs to be filled out.
2. Bookkeeping: From calculating a property’s operating expenses to filing property taxes on your behalf, your VA can help with all aspects of your property management business’ bookkeeping. In addition to updating your books, your VA can also file taxes for you, help pay any fines that come up, mark whether or not rent has been collected from any rental properties, track monthly mortgage payments, and calculate monthly expenses for your purchased properties. When investing in properties, you’ll need to create and stick to a budget as well. Ask your VA to help calculate your operating and overhead expenses as well as margins.
3. Tenant Communications: It’s important to keep your tenants informed of events in your building, whether it’s maintenance work being done on the facing of the building, changes in maintenance charges, or the July 4th pool party. Your VA can help by creating announcements or monthly newsletters that can then be emailed to your tenants.
4. Research: If you are in the market to invest in new properties, you’ll want to make sure that you’ve conducted the necessary background investigation. Your virtual assistant can help by reviewing sale prices of comparable properties in the area, property tax information, the demographics of the surrounding neighborhood, and other critical information.
5. Hiring Extra Help: Individuals who invest in properties often also act as the self-managing landlords of their properties as well. Being in the role of landlord—on top of the existing responsibilities of property manager—entails knowing how to unclog a toilet, fix drywall, repair broke ceiling fans, rewire lighting, etc. But if you don’t know your way around a toolbox or just don’t have the time to do everything yourself, you’ll have to hire help to maintain or fix your properties. Your VA can take the time to do thorough research on plumbers, electricians, and handymen; make any necessary phone calls to reach out and ask questions on your behalf or find pricing information; and make necessary hiring decisions to get your properties fixed. Your VA can also be responsible for scheduling these repairs as well as services like snow removal, landscaping, and trash pickup. They can also ensure these tasks get done, and that any hired help gets paid.
Being a property investor or manager can be rewarding both financially and personally, but the work it takes to get there is quite substantial. Remembering that you don’t have to do everything yourself—even if you can’t afford to hire full-time help—can make being a property manager much easier.