Did you know about 36% of people in the United States rent their homes? With such a large percentage of the population renting, there is bound to be a lot of competition for decent apartments.
If you are an investment property owner, you may wonder what you can do about this. Well, you have two options to address this.
You can use tenant placement or property management services.
Which is better? This guide goes over the pros and cons of each.
Tenant Placement
This tends to focus more on making sure you have the right people entering your apartment. The reason why this is so important is that it can cause you a lot of problems if you choose a poor tenant to lease your property.
Some examples include having a criminal background, having a bad credit score, having no proof of income, having a history of getting evicted from an apartment, and more.
What this service does is check for all of this before a tenant has the opportunity to sign a lease for your apartment. Then, this service will verify whether a tenant is a good fit for your specific apartment.
This can vary depending on what your specific standards are and what the cost of living is in your area.
For example, the median rent in St. Louis last year was nearly $1,500 per month. Tenant placement services will keep this in mind and determine whether a tenant can financially afford your apartment.
To determine this, they may want proof that a potential tenant is making more than $3,000 per month or has a significant amount of savings. If you are looking for someone who specializes in these services, this may be the path to go down.
Property Management
The other option you have is to hire a property management company. This type of company can help you with things such as property management strategies, finding vendors to help with issues around the building, keeping up with local laws, conducting rental valuations, and more.
While they also handle certain tenant concerns, such as rent payments and evictions, they do a wide variety of other things too. This is the type of company that will help you with the needs of the physical building.
While tenants are crucial to keep the lights on, you also need people to maintain those lights for the tenants. Property managers help you do this and keep everyone inside of the building happy.
Which Is Better?
So, which is better, tenant placement and property management? The truth is it depends on your specific needs. It comes down to whether you need more help finding quality tenants or maintaining your property.
Either way, PMI STL Metro can help you with this. We are a property management company and a real estate brokerage company that has the best interests of St. Louis property owners in mind.
We have over 20 years of experience in this industry and can help investment property owners keep track of how well their investment property is doing. Message us here to learn more.
