If you just purchased your first investment property, turned your primary residence into a rental home, or have been self-managing your portfolio until now, chances are you have many questions. Specifically, about how professional property management companies operate, their responsibilities, general philosophies, systems, processes, and what (if any) to expect as far as guarantees go if and when you decide to hire one.
Hiring a professional property management company is essentially a trade of time, energy, hassles, costly mistakes, and knowledge, all in exchange for a fee. Your manager should bring to the table all of those, as well as existing systems, processes, and standard operating procedures so that you can rest assured that your property is being managed with reasonable care. However, not all companies operate the same, nor offer the same guarantees. As such, your experience as an investor may vary from one property manager to another.
In this article, we aim to help landlords considering a professional property manager understand what to look for, and will break down Keyrenter’s guarantees and why each of them is crucial in creating an extraordinary experience.
Keyrenter Arkansas’s Guarantees For Landlords
Our Communication Commitment
Effective communication with clients is the most important aspect of any business and is particularly crucial in the property management industry.
Landlords want to know what goes on with their rental property. Whether it’s vacant or occupied, a tenant submits a work order, or perhaps fails to pay rent per the lease agreement; all of these are important bits and pieces of information that offer landlords clarity and understanding as to how things are going, giving them a bit more control over the journey of owning real estate as an investment vehicle.
In turn, not having anyone answer your doubts directly and not knowing when you’ll hear back from your manager is both frustrating and should be considered a red flag.
Making landlords feel heard, valued, and involving them in the process as much as possible is one of Keyrenter’s unique differentiators. For that reason, we are committed to communicating with clients within 24 business hours from the time they reach out, and to be immediately available in case of emergencies.
Aside from being highly responsive and overly communicative, we’ll keep you informed about many of the moving parts that go into managing your property. Did we just list your property? You will receive weekly traction reports letting you know how many prospects expressed interest and walked your property when it’s on the market for rent. Was a lease just signed on your property? Did your tenant submit a maintenance request? Is the lease coming up for a renewal? At each of these events and many more, our team will communicate with you via email, and, in many cases, these are automated through the technology suite we leverage to ensure landlords are fully aware of what’s happening at the property.
We strive to make Keyrenter’s communication impeccable and set the standard among property management companies. Our quick and efficient communication is an important incentive for our clients and the main reason they stay with us over the long haul.
Leasing & Tenant Placement Guarantee
While it may seem that owning a property is mostly a passive endeavor, it still requires you to find high-quality tenants who want to stay for multiple years. Not only does this take time, but may also incur marketing costs to give exposure to your property using ads and different platforms.
As such, the longer it takes you to place tenants in your property, the higher the cost of vacancy, which, of course, diminishes the return on your investment. Hence, it may benefit a property owner looking to rent their homes to work with a professional property management company equipped with the systems and processes to handle such endeavors. After all, professional property managers do this every day, are experienced, and possess the resources and network to help place those high-quality tenants fast.
Our Tenant Placement Guarantee is the first of Keyrenter’s promises. As part of it, if we fail to secure a tenant with a deposit in 14 business days or fewer, and after all requested documents have been received by Keyrenter (including W9 and Owner Property Information Document), we will waive the owner’s first month of management fees. Not to be confused with our flat rate leasing fee, which is charged once a tenant is found, involves a comprehensive process, and is taken out of the first month’s rent paid by the tenant. This aligns our incentives with those of owners, as we do not get paid for managing your property or placing a tenant until after the work has been done.
Our Tenant Placement Guarantee requires three conditions to be met:
- The property has to be vacant from the moment the agreement to work together is signed.
- The property has to meet Keyrenter’s Minimum Property Standards.
- The property has to allow pets. Since most renters nowadays own pets, disallowing them would reduce the pool of prospective tenants and make the property significantly harder to rent in such a short timeframe.
Lease & Tenant Guarantee
While uncommon, there’s always the small chance that a tenant can’t pay their rent on time. A family emergency, financial struggles, or other unforeseen circumstances can get in their way, making them unable to fulfill their lease obligations.
Most times, this is temporary. Though it may require a little patience from the landlord, an agreement can be reached through effective communication. However, it’s important to always be prepared for the remote possibility of a tenant disengaging from communications and their responsibilities, and to have measures in place for when it happens.
Working with a property manager prevents a scenario where you have to deal with an eviction by yourself, and makes it less likely to happen in the first place.
At Keyrenter, we minimize the risk for our homeowners by performing a meticulous 14-point screening of applicants to validate high-quality prospective tenants. We verify their current and former rental and employment circumstances, cross-reference their names and social security numbers with multiple databases, complete a full criminal and credit background check, verify their income, and more to ensure they qualify to rent the property in question and would ultimately be a good fit.
What’s more, our Lease Guarantee protects you if a tenant placed by Keyrenter does not meet their end of the bargain, unexpectedly moves out without informing anyone, stops paying rent, or violates the lease agreement to the point an eviction is required. If this happens, and a tenant placed by Keyrenter doesn’t fulfill their lease obligation, our team will work tirelessly to make the owner whole, and if unsuccessful, we will place a new tenant without charging our flat rate leasing fee again. This too aligns our incentives with owners to find and place high-quality tenants in your properties.
Maintenance Guarantee
Investment properties are an attractive vehicle to build wealth, create a stream of passive income, hedge against inflation, and carry many other tax advantages and lifestyle benefits. Be that as it may, they can also be costly to maintain, need to be managed with reasonable care, and require regular maintenance to prevent expensive repairs and extend the life of systems, fixtures, appliances, and functional usage of the home. One day, the AC starts leaking freon. Next, the water heater does not supply hot water to the shower. Is sewage backing up into the bathtub? Time to call a plumber.
To keep your tenants happy and for multiple years, repairs of this nature need to be completed swiftly and in a manner that will take care of the problem long-term, and not just band-aid it temporarily. Typically, the bandaid turns out to be more expensive than completing the repair properly, as it only lasts so long, ultimately resurfacing, and forcing the owners to repair it the right way the second time around. Turning the cheap bandaid into a much more expensive repair. For these reasons, every landlord should consider the management philosophy of the company they hire, and specifically how it relates to the inevitable maintenance requests that will be submitted by their tenants throughout their lease.
At Keyrenter, we utilize our proven preferred vendor network to get repairs done professionally, timely, and affordably. If a repair is done incorrectly, we will ensure it is fixed properly, and the labor and materials on the improper repair could be fully refunded. That is our Maintenance Guarantee. Our scale of operation allows us to provide our vendor partners with a consistent stream of work, which helps us build and maintain strong relationships with these service providers and ultimately ensures we can offer our clients preferential pricing and service.
Over the years, we’ve developed a trustworthy vendor network with professional in-house and contract handymen, technicians, and service companies to provide timely and affordable repairs for our clients. Most importantly, repairs that require a certain license, such as HVAC, electric, and plumbing, are done by licensed contractors and professionals that our team has vetted thoroughly.
Pet Guarantee
Next and equally important in our list of property management responsibilities is our Pet Guarantee.
As mentioned earlier, most families now own a dog, cat, or a similar companion. That’s why landlords need to welcome pets into their property to make it accessible to those prospects who own these pets.
While pets present a risk of damaging the property, accepting them has become an unspoken requirement instead of a simple competitive advantage. Not doing so would be detrimental to your ability to quickly lease your property and it may inevitably increase the time your property spends vacant on the market.
Keyrenter takes both your property’s integrity and the right of tenants to enjoy the company of an animal seriously. As such, we charge tenants placed by us a non-refundable pet fee (in addition to pet rent) that goes into a self-issued insurance plan. With this, we assume the risk and protect your property with a policy that covers up to $1,000 in pet damages. This Pet Guarantee does not cover nor replace the refundable security deposit that tenants are commonly charged for, and could be used for any damages that are beyond normal wear and tear.
Transparency and Communication: Keyrenter’s Defining Edge
One more way we provide value, and communicate with landlords, is by leveraging our technology’s capacity to provide real-time data and information. Instead of needing to reach out to us, landlords have access to real-time daily analytics, cash flow, occupancy rates, and total rent collected, filterable by property and date. Through our systems, owners can also find monthly statements, detailed property information including rental status, a complete log of your financial transactions, income, expenses, and more. Our team also can automate reports such as rent rolls, income statements, delinquency reports, and others, at cadences such as weekly or monthly to provide owners with snapshot updates.
Combined with your Investor Dashboard (currently only available for single-family, duplexes, and quadplexes), powered by Blanket Homes, our technological suite of systems is designed to enhance transparency, deepen understanding of your investment’s performance, empower you to make informed decisions, and deliver first-class Property Management Services!
Need Help Renting Out Your Property?
Working with the right property manager allows you to manage your real estate assets passively and efficiently. For the magic to happen, however, you must choose a company with established property management responsibilities in the form of customer guarantees. That way, you’ll know exactly what to expect from their service.
Keyrenter has clear, transparent, and iron-clad guarantees in place that include efficient tenant placement, a strong vendor network to complete all maintenance and repairs, and highly responsive team members who are committed to quick communication. These safeguard our clients’ best interests and grant them peace of mind that their investments are in good hands.
If you’re interested in seeing how Keyrenter can help you, visit our website today and contact us to learn how we can make your life easier as a landlord, optimize your existing rentals, and even grow your real estate portfolio.
FAQ
Q1. Do All Property Management Companies Offer The Same Guarantees?
A: Despite property management responsibilities being similar across the industry, not all managers offer guarantees. Landlords need to look into what different management companies offer before settling for one. After all, you’re hoping to find someone easy and great to work with over the long run.
Q2. What Happens If Keyrenter Breaks Any Of Their Guarantees?
A: Keyrenter’s guarantees are designed to help bring relief to our customers and confidence in working with us. In the unlikely scenario that we are not able to follow up on any of them, we’ll assume full responsibility.
For example, our Tenant Placement Guarantee waives the first monthly management fee for landlords if we can’t secure a tenant within 14 business days. Another example is our Lease Guarantee, where if a tenant placed by us after going through our meticulous screening procedures were to be evicted, we’ll find and place a new one for free.