3 Landlord Expenses You Might Not Have Considered

Our job as a property manager is to make as much money as possible with your property. and that means maximizing your income and minimizing your expenses, but our founder, Jarrett Lau, runs a company as well and has to make sure that his people are taken care of and we do things such as health care, time off, and all the other benefits that are necessary to take care of an employee. In general, we are just gonna explain to you why these additional fees exist.

#1 Property Inspections

We have property inspections. Property inspection means that we have to go to the property, take pictures, and we will send you a sample report. It’s about 40-50 pages long. We do everything. From the fridge, to the roof, to the basement. We look at the whole thing to make sure that we take a look at your property and see if there’s any type of issues that are coming up.

After we have this report will go back and we’re going to type up everything as far as suggestions and then once you get those suggestions and you approve them, we then have to put them into the system and get those coordinated. The entire fee is only $150 for that and that pays for the entire staff of both being in the field, coming back, typing it all up, getting it done to you and communicating it to you as well. That’s just once a year and if your property turns over.

#2 Property Maintenance

In addition,  there’s a 5% management fee as far as charging for any type of vendor or work done outside of in-house vendor maintenance. We do the majority of our work ourselves from plumbing to electrical to handyman, water gutters, the painting. You don’t typically have to worry about it at all but there are certain ones. We don’t do our locks in house. You might have your own specific vendor that you want us to bid out and work with as well.

We actually have to coordinate this work with them, make sure that the work gets done. We then have to pay them the bills to be able to get this done. It’s a long, lengthy process and again if the bills say $100, we’re making $5, we’re not getting rich on it, but it is something that helps us offset our time with it. 

#3 Legal Fees

When we say legal issues that means any type of court eviction or any other type of things related to your property that you might need assistance, it’s very very rare that that it actually ends up happening. 

Recap

As a recap, there’s three things that you typically would have to pay for above and beyond your management fee. One, is going to be any type of property inspections once a year. Second, it is going to be any type of maintenance not done by our in house staff and lastly, any type of legal fees and issues which again is very rare.

We hope that it gives you a good explanation of understanding, that our management fee will include the majority of work that we do but why there might be additional fees and how much they are, and when they would occur.

If you or anyone else you know is looking for a proactive property manager, that would be able to make sure that you’re taking care of, and that your property and everything else is done, please think of Green Ocean Property Management, you get more than a property manager, you get peace of mind.