Do You Hire a Real Estate Nanny or Send Your Property to Day Care?

Being Your Own Landlord is a Lot of Work

There are so many things to keep track of as a landlord. You’ve got rent payments to monitor, maintenance to do, taxes to file, housing association fees to cover, other miscellaneous fees to remember, rent renewal contracts to provide, new rental rates to keep up with, tenants to research on, and so much more! If you’ve got a lot of responsibilities on your plate already, adding all these bullet points of becoming a property manager yourself may easily lead to burnout. Nobody wants that.

Whether you fell into this vocation accidentally or by choice, you might not have expected this amount of work. Seeing others seemingly breeze through the job and get so much money in return may have looked so tempting before deciding to start on this journey. But now that you’re a landlord yourself, things are a lot different than what you’ve imagined. On the off chance that you’re yet to become a landlord, your research is about to bear fruit!

Yes. It’s true. There’s no way to skip the work. However, who said that YOU have to do ALL the work? Can’t you just hire a real estate nanny or send them off to daycare?

An In-House Landlord or Property Management?

We’re not saying that you should treat your properties like your kids (and vice-versa), but finding someone else to do the job for you isn’t a new revelation. Most businesses have been running like that since businesses have been a thing. Kings had armies to fight for them, people of trade had assistants, and our neighbors had us mow their lawns! If you can’t seem to fit the work that the property requires from you, then instead of just letting it go, you could find someone else to do it for you.

There are two ways to go about this. Either you do it in-house or outsource it. Which one works? It depends, as most things are.

Doing it in-house means that you’re going to hire a full-time landlord to do everything for you. They’re essentially an assistant that does everything for you. From finding tenants, dealing with tenants, maintenance, and most of the paperwork, they’ve got it covered. While this option is usually cheaper than the other, you would have to “hire” this person, which means providing benefits, covering payroll burden costs, or dealing with other requirements your local government may have when employing someone. Do note that just like hiring a nanny isn’t necessarily cheaper than going with a daycare, further research is required to determine which solution suits you better.

On the other hand, outsourcing with a property management company entails working with an organization instead of working with a single person. The property management company manages the property with property managers (we purposely made that confusingly redundant for comedic effect) and pretty much does the same things that a landlord would. If the property manager quits, the company is likely to have another one to replace them. Whether that counts as an advantage to you or not depends. One of them might be a task machine veteran, while the other someone who just stumbled their way into the hiring process.

Which One is Better?

Your experience with the two may vary on several factors. Going corporate usually comes at a higher cost (a percentage of your monthly rent), but you should feel more secure because of their experience. Depending on which company you’re going for, they may also provide complete plumbing, contracting, HVAC, and other services. However, these may arguably be in the arsenal of a landlord as well.

Are you willing to take the risk of getting a bad apple of a property manager instead of potentially having to handle all the landlord responsibilities for some time when the current one suddenly leaves? We don’t want to give you a “pick your poison” dilemma, but since they essentially provide the same support, as far as our problem is concerned, it boils down to which disadvantage you’re willing to choose.

One other factor to help you decide between the two is your goals. If you have too-many-to-handle properties or planning to add more down the line, then going for a property management company might be better. Not having to micro-manage properties can help if you’re focusing on building a portfolio.

On the other hand, if you want more control over decisions such as which tenant to get (or evict), which contracting company to go for, or deciding who the next landlord is when the current one leaves, you should go for the in-house route. Some owners may want to be more intentional with their properties, even for business purposes.

Again, before making a decision, we recommend you do your digging to get the answers to your questions. Who knows, you might not want to choose between the two and go out of your way to be a better landlord yourself!

Not Worth the Effort?

Like what we’ve said in one of our older articles, being your own landlord (or an investor) is not for everyone. The added responsibilities that earning from a property brings may be too much for the way you want to live life. With that said, you don’t have to be worried as you could still sell the property.

To gain a little more profit, you can hire a listing agent and look up our guide here. But if you’re just looking to cut down on losses fairly quickly (in about two weeks), you can work with a real estate investor instead.

If you prefer the latter, we encourage, as always, doing some research to find the best for you, but we would also request that take us, Shorefront Investments, into consideration. For years, we’ve been helping people get out of tricky situations like what you might have now. If you’re interested, please give us a call at (850) 713-4866, send us an email, or fill a form on our front page!