The Fifth Rule of Thumb – Managing Your Property – The Manager

One of the reasons that you will be able to find properties at a discount is because owners were unable to find good management. The poor management of the property resulted in the seller being willing to sell the self-storage facility at a discount. To avoid having the same problem, you want to make sure that you have a great property manager.

When it comes to managing your property well, it is all about the manager. Often, you can turn a bad property into a good property just by putting in a good manager. Sadly, the opposite is also true. You want to make sure that you have good systems in place from the beginning so that your manager can track your tenants and your numbers. If the manager doesn’t know what is going on, how will you?

There are a few different kinds of self-storage property managers. There is the type of manager that just collects the rent, makes sure the units are clean, rents out new units to new tenants and reports any maintenance issues. The other kind of manager does all of that and more. They also take care of the social media, the advertising, and the books. You receive weekly reports to let you know where things stand. Your manager can do as little or as much as you want them to, but you need to decide what they do and how it is done.

If you decide to let your manager do most of the work, then you need to make sure that you have an experienced, well trained manager on staff so that you know you are getting the best service possible. You also want to make sure that you know enough about your software and your systems that you can tell if there is something inappropriate going on. You don’t want to be in a position where a manager can embezzle from you because you don’t know what you are looking at.

Your manager can make or break your facility, so you want to find someone who is going to take your self-storage facility to the next level. As always, happy investing.