Effective Means of Communication (email, phone, web)

[Hector R.]

I'm writing this to provide our experience in managing our first rental property. Since this was a property my wife and I were planning to manage, we wanted a way for both of us to have access to the same email and phone while at the same type giving our prospective clients a single point of contact. We ended up deciding to use G Suite, by Google: 

1. First, we purchased a domain (e.g. greatrentals.com) to put our property details and present a more professional look. This cost us $12.00 for a whole year. 

2. Then we got the basic G Suite plan, which is $5/per month. This gave us email, google sites (to create your own website), storage (Google Drive 30G), calendar, etc. 

3. With 1 and 2 in place, now we had an email address to match our domain (e.g. info at greatrentals.com) and for me and my wife to use.

4. Google Drive is used to store our application forms and other useful documents. We maintain a document of potential client details so we know who is interested, what they are looking for, etc. Any time we schedule a viewing, we add it to our the calendar, and it appears in both of our calendars, that way no one misses important appointments. 

5. We also activated Google voice, and got a number that would ring on both her phone and mine. The really cool thing about this is that when we receive a call from a potential client, we know it is for our rental property and that we can answer the phone in a professional manner, "Thank you for calling greatrentals, how may I help you?). If we can't answer it, it will go into that number's voicemail, not our personal's voicemail. Again, a professional voicemail message is setup for this. 

Anyway, those are just some tips we wanted to share since this community has been so great for us. As you can see, our goal in establishing this method was to try to separate as much as we could our personal means of communication from our rental business. I believe this not only makes us more efficient, but also gives clients the feel that they are dealing with a more serious, more professional company. l hope this helps someone out there. If you have other tips, feel free to share them.