Change can be hard, no doubt about it, but it is often necessary. Your rental properties are often your retirement plan, if not your main source of income, and trusting it with your current property management company when they're not taking proper care of your building, tenants, and reporting, can turn a retirement plan into a nightmare. This is why moving over to a new property manager can be a vital strategy to your financial plans.
Before going into the process of changing to a new property management company, I want to quickly highlight the top 5 reasons property owners leave their old property managers for Chicago Style Management.
Top 5 reasons people move their rental property over to Chicago Style Management
1. Poor Communication
You have a question, did your tenant pay, what's going on with leasing of your property, or why did that work order cost so much, and your current management company is taking two weeks to give you an answer, can destroy any chance of peace of mind that you may have from hiring your current property management company. Beyond answering your emails and calls during office hours Chicago style management strives to give you access to see your answers at any time with real time access to see if tenants paid, what work orders have come in, and what bills are being paid, we lead the Chicago property management market in reporting access and transparency.
2. Slow Leasing
The old days of throwing a quick ad up and getting tenants in the area are dead, and many people have left their current company to move their leasing to Chicago Style Management. We use a mix of great leasing agents with new technology powered by AI that is more efficient at following up and prescreening tenants.
3. Lack of Local Knowledge
If your current property management company is based in another state the odds are their knowledge of Illinois law and the differences between Chicago laws and Chicago Heights laws is much lower. Not to mention the local rules and best practices that a north side property management company may not be equipped to handle the way we at Chicago Style Management are for south side and south suburban properties. We are super active in groups like the Chicago friendly landlord group which is a great resource for landlords to get questions answered on the best way to run your rental property business.
4: Financial Reporting
Financial reports are vital to knowing if your investment is doing well or needs to be turned around. At Chicago Style Management you have access to your financial reports 24/7 on your online portals. If your current management company is still using pen and paper to record rents the odds are they may be stealing money from you, maybe on purpose but if not by mismanaging funds.
5. Maintenance not being done
In Chicago you are going to have work orders on your property because our homes were often built 100 years ago and thus break down more often than a city that has homes built in the 2000's. We often take over from a current property manager that either is afraid to make repairs that can cost you money (they want to look good on paper while your property's value is going down) or don't ever go to the property to catch the issues. We have an internal maintenance department that can take care of all the issues that your new tenants report and keeping tenants happy keeps tenants in your apartment longer allowing you to be more profitable.
Are you having any of these issues? If so, it may be time to talk to a team member at Chicago Style Management to see how we can help your cash flow, and keep your property in good condition with a structured approach to get your real estate investment on track to help you have money for retirement.
Now that you know it's time to change your Chicago property management company, lets go over some steps to switch property management companies and make it a smooth transition.
1. Make sure you give your old management company proper notice: Your Property management agreement probably has a notice period to cancel, some agreements are for a full year while others like ours just ask for a 30 day notice in order to cancel. find out how much time you need to give to be considered proper notice and then work your start date with your new property management company from there.
2. Tenants contact info and leases: one of the two biggest things we need to get from your current management company to make it a smooth transition is all of your tenant info, this includes current leases, rent roll (any unpaid rent that is due) names, emails, and phone numbers of tenants. Also if you have any section 8 tenants, getting their voucher number can cut down the time it takes to move over your section 8 account to the new management company.
3. The other thing that will help the most is having proper keys to the property. If you can get the current keys from the current property manager it can save us a lot of time when it comes to getting into the property and getting a hold of the tenants.
4. Clear communication about the transition process. asking your current company to inform the tenants that a new company will be taking over can make the process much smoother as it's less likely they will pay their rent to the wrong company, as well as ensure they know the new management company is now in charge of the rental property and their lease.
That's pretty much it in terms of asks from your current company that we would try to get to be able to take over.
What if they refuse to help?
if a company refuses to furnish leases, etc., it will make transitioning a little harder but also is a great sign you are making the right decision changing from your current management company to a new one. But what does it mean, first off let me be clear 100% we will still be able to take over it just might take a little longer to get going and take a little more strategic planning on our end on how to get the information from the tenants. Generally instead of having a clear picture of everything in your building in a few weeks it may take a few months, but after we get everything we need from the tenants going forward you will have 24/7 access to your tenants lease, financials and any ongoing maintenance issues so you never have to worry about what is going on in the home.
The switch is definitely the most labor intense part of having Chicago Style Management take over your rental portfolio, but once done and you see how accurate financial records, a responsive team, and faster leasing and maintenance can take out the stress from your day to day life when it comes to your rental portfolio, you'll realize it's the best business decision you made in a long time.
