What's your time worth?
What is your time worth? As a busy landlord, can you afford to spend valuable time managing your properties? An often overlooked aspect of property investing, read this article to find out why management fees could actually save you money. Read this article to find out more.
Are you a landlord who prefers to self-manage your properties? Perhaps you think no one can do a better job than you to look after your property. Who better to manage the tenancy than someone who knows the property inside and out?
You might think that agents only collect the rent anyway, and how hard can that be? With this view, a monthly management fee may seem expensive for what is essentially nothing more than a banking transaction.
But the real question you need to ask yourself is, can you afford NOT to have a managing agent? It is our firm belief (and of course, we are biased, but hear us out) that every landlord should have a managing agent to look after their investment properties. This is why.
Managing a tenancy effectively takes time and involves much more than simply checking the bank account to ensure the rent has been paid. Realistically, property management should take up an average of 2-3 hours per month per property.
If you are working in a senior job role, you could be earning more in an hour at work than the cost of monthly management by a professional letting agent. As a busy person, you will likely value your weekend private time very highly and treasure those weekends away from the office to spend with your family and friends.
With that in mind, surely you value your private time, off the clock, highly enough to now want to have to spend hours each month devoted to managing your rental property portfolio.
You may have come across the concept of considering your tasks as £10, £100 or £1000 tasks. You should outsource the lower-value tasks to free up your time for the higher-value tasks. You may have employed a gardener so that you don't have to spend your Saturday mornings mowing the lawn or a cleaner to keep on top of the housework, thus freeing yourself up to work on higher-value tasks. Or, of course, to outsource some of your chores to give yourself some free time.
You could likely generate thousands of pounds from sourcing another property to invest in rather than spending valuable hours over the weekend dealing with paperwork or collating your rental income.
If we agree that the monthly management of your property will most likely take up two or three hours of your valuable private weekend time, it is absolutely value for money to pay for a letting agent. Not only do you reclaim those weekend hours for yourself, but the agent will ensure that everything is handled correctly so that your investment is safe and your income and profits are preserved.
It is also worth mentioning that, in much the same as an insurance policy, the management fee doesn't fluctuate based on the number of hours worked on the property. If there is a quiet month, perhaps the letting agents will only spend an hour working on your property. But if things go wrong, and the agent has to work on your property for 10 hours in one week, you won't be charged any more. The fee will be the same whether your agent has to process rent payments or put together a deposit claim for the courts.
So, consider for a moment: can you really afford NOT to use a letting agent to manage your tenancies for you? Freedom of time, peace of mind that all is being dealt with for you properly and is legally compliant, and you won't have to worry about ringing around to find a plumber on a Friday night if something goes wrong; the agent is there to do all of that for you. That's got to be worth a few quid a month.
To learn more about how we can help you to save yourself time, energy and perhaps even money in the long term, get in touch with our team of property experts today.