Property management expert Deniz Yusuf says reviews, relationships, empathy and resilience are all key indicators of a good property manager.
Success for property investors can be heavily influenced by the quality of property management in their tool box.
Deniz Yusuf trains, coaches and consults with property managers and agents across Australia, New Zealand and the United States to help them bring maximum value to clients.
He joined KnowHow founder Bushy Martin on the Get Invested podcast to discuss why hiring a property manager is key, and more importantly how to find one best suited to you.
Deniz explained that one of the best ways to differentiate a good property management business from a bad one is to look at their marketing.
“Have a look at how they market properties, because the better your rental property is being marketed, the higher quality tenant that they’re trying to attract for you. So if they’re doing video marketing, if they’re doing professional photography, floor plans – all the top notch stuff. Yes, it’s all shiny, but they understand the depths of how to attract better quality tenants,” he said.
“Just because a property manager may say, ‘oh we can get you a thousand dollars a week and they make the rent look higher’, it doesn’t mean that they’re the right agency. The right agency will give you the real facts. So it’s not necessarily about how much you can get each week, because it might sit vacant for five weeks so you could achieve it, so make sure you don’t look at that.”
He also advised investors to consider their reviews and ratings.
“Look at their social media and look at their Google reviews, because the tenants, the landlords and the tradespeople, they’re the ones writing their reviews. So it’s really, really important. And we often find that if anyone has less than 14 reviews and it’s under four stars, they need training,” Deniz said.
“So those ad agencies, they don’t care how properties are marketed, they just think they can put it online and a tenant will come. We’re all about teaching our clients to attract the best quality tenant in the shortest period of time.”
It’s also essential that a property manager has empathy and builds strong relationships with all stakeholders, not just the landlord.
“Empathy is certainly needed in property management … one that rings and really cares and is empathetic for the owner and they have interest in the tenant. It’s really important the relationship. You need to pick a property manager that’s got the relationship between the tenant, the property, the tradesperson and the owner because it’s right across the board. If you find a property manager that is solely only focussed on the owner, then it’s not going to work because then you’re going to get personality clashes with the tenants and you’ll get a high turnover of tenants as well,” Deniz revealed.
Another desirable trait in a good property manager is their drive to continually develop and broaden their training and knowledge.
“You want to find someone that listens to audiobooks, does continue training, attends conferences and events, does self-development courses etc. These are questions that you want to ask. It’s all about continual development. I myself have four coaches,” Deniz said.
Finally, resilience and longevity will also highlight a successful property manager, because ‘property managers are dealing with conflict every day of the week’. And it is the continual development mentioned above which will play a major factor in building this resilience.
“Longevity of staff is a tough one. Through the pandemic, the pressure on property managers went through the roof because obviously a lot of owners were all stressed about whether tenants were going to pay their rent. So who do they call? They call the property manager demanding what’s going on. And so the turnover did increase sadly, but those companies that have got the right culture have done well and they’ve kept staff,” Deniz said.
“Those [property management] companies that have continued training, go to regular conferences and have the regular meetings have kept that resilience up and they prepare them for that conflict management. And we have courses on conflict management because some of the stress that property managers have to go through is quite intense. Landlords go through break ups and put pressure on the sale of properties and who’s going to be responsible for the property, and then the tenants are having break ups. And the property manager is the middle person dealing with both.”
Bushy said property managers can also become a great source of truth for investors.
“The property manager is a key player right at the start because they can tell you what type of properties are letting well and selling well because they’ve got no interest in selling. So they’ll give you the truth, whereas what some of the agents like to do is blow smoke up your backside. So you’ll get a real handle on what’s working, what doesn’t,” Bushy said.
Listen to the full interview here.
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