Your dream is to be a successful female entrepreneur, and you’ve decided you want a career that offers your residual income and lets you help folks in the process. So you buy up some rental properties, or work to flip some houses, and now you are managing rental properties.
You dream of this, but you’re not sure how to make it a reality. You have the drive, and the money, so what are your next steps? And once you fulfill those steps, how will you keep abreast with your renters and let people know about your available properties?
Consider Your Options For Advertising
This may be a little backward, since you’ll want properties before you start advertising them. However, it’s important to put a focus on setting up a website. You want to have a website that is easily accessible and lets people know exactly what you have to offer, from 24 hour maintenance to giving them a place to pay their rent online.
Once you have your properties and your website, then you’ll buy ads in the local paper or post on Craig’s List to let people know what you have available.
Get Certified
Depending on the state you live in, you may be required to take a certification class in order to officially become a property manager. If you want some really good information on how the housing market works, you may also want to go through the process of getting a realtor’s license. This isn’t really needed unless you plan to sell homes for profit, but it can be useful nonetheless.
Find The Right Properties
Rental properties can include houses, apartment complexes, and even non-residential buildings. Do you want to rent to businesses or give individuals a place to live? That’s one decision you’ll need to make before picking the properties you’ll use for your rental business.
You also want to consider how much money you have to invest in your new career. If you have unlimited cash flow you could purchase houses that need some work, fix them up, then offer them for rent. If you have less money you’ll want to look for homes for sale that may already be livable and save yourself some time and money.
Hire An Excellent Staff
When you are managing rental properties issues are going to come up once in awhile. You may be a power woman in a suit, but you can’t always do everything on your own. You may need a secretary to field calls on rental properties, and you will definitely need a maintenance crew on standby. Hiring great employees will simply be an asset to your company.
You will also want to have an attorney on retainer. There are many things that can go wrong when you’re managing rental properties, from house fires to the eviction of tenants, and you want to be prepared.