Every Property Management company is going to tell you the same thing in that we look after the property for you so that you don't have to worry or stress about trying to get it rented, collect the rent or deal with maintenance or tenancy issues. Basically, you can forget about the day-to-day stuff and just collect your payment at the end of the month. This is the standard industry practise.
In addition to that, we regularly review the rents to ensure that you are getting the best possible return on your investment. But probably more importantly, we fix the Tenancy Agreements so that the tenants can't give notice and vacate at times where it is more difficult to re-tenant the property. For example, we do not want tenants vacating in December as this is a very difficult time to get a property rented and you could end up with no tenant for up to 6 weeks. This would not be maximising your income from your investment, and it leaves the property vulnerable when it is not occupied. With all Fixed Term Tenancies, we seek communication/instruction from you before offering it to the tenant.
The term of our contract with our owners, coincides with the term of the tenancy. This means that if our contract was to end, then we would finalise the tenancy before returning the property. It's designed to keep things simple.
There are things that you can do to protect your property and income. For example, you may want to consider Landlord Insurance - to protect your rental income. We recommend Real Landlord Insurance. This works in conjunction with your building insurance. It will offer you protection for loss of rent (for example Christchurch earthquakes or if a tenant defaults) and protection against malicious damage. With the increase of Meth use in the country, Real Landlord Insurance will insure you against meth contamination in the event your building insurer will not, terms and conditions apply.
While we don't mean to scare you, meth use is becoming more of a problem and will damage your property quite quickly and invisibly. There are no visible signs of meth contamination. A qualified technician will take samples and send them to the lab for analysis. Not all meth contamination occurs from being a meth lab. Smoking P in a property will contaminate it over time but manufacture will contaminate it immediately.
You may want to consider getting your pending investment property tested for meth as part of the condition of sale. This will ensure that you have a healthy home to offer the rental market. We can test after each tenancy as part of our contract with our owners to ensure the home remains healthy. Some owners have even opted to install a Meth Minder which is a device mounted on the ceiling (like a smoke alarm) that monitors the quality of the air. If it detects meth manufacture, it will send a silent alarm to the monitoring company. It costs around $40 a month depending on what type of contract you sign up for.
There is loads of information we can share with you. If you would like us to, we can send you an information pack and a copy of our management authority. All we need is a postal address. Our base rate is 9% + gst on the rent we collect. There are other charges, but these charges only apply to services used. For example, inspections are billed at $67 + gst per inspection and Tribunal Hearings are billed at $95.00 + gst per hour.
We look forward to hearing from you.
