How to determine how much rent to charge in Fort Worth, TX
When you’re pricing your rental property, one thing you don’t want to do is rely on the public rental comps that are out there. That’s one thing we always tell owners when they call about how to determine how much rent to charge. Pricing is a bit of a science but also a lot of art.
Timing and Pricing
Timing is an important part of pricing. Tenants don’t want to move a Christmas tree. Things slow down a bit during the holiday season, and our best leasing time is May through the second week in August. Everyone wants to get into a property and settled before their children start school. Timing is important, and you need to be careful with those public rent comps because they can be six months old.
Key Pricing Factors
Timing
Neighborhood
Pricing
Quality
Micro-Specific Neighborhoods
If your prospective tenant comes to see your property, and there are a few houses in the neighborhood that aren’t the nicest, and when they drive up to your property there are five or six dogs next door barking, they’re going to form an opinion about the area. There’s not a lot you can do, but maybe you take them a different way to the house. You’ll have to strategize around this because it will impact your price.
The WOW Factor
When we can get the wow factor right, that alone can overcome the other two issues when it comes to pricing your property. If you ask a property manager for a rental rate over the phone, and someone gives you a rate without seeing the property, you should be leery. We like to get in that property and see it before we can tell you how much it will rent for. We can point out what renters are looking for and recommend how to add value. Simple things like ceiling fans, fixtures, flooring, and bathrooms will increase your rental potential. Never leave the old autumn-colored gold appliances. Curb appeal is huge.
If your prospect drives up and walks in and says “wow” – you can overcome almost anything else.
So, the pricing strategy is a little bit of art and science. We do price high sometimes because we want to wait and see what the activity is. We’ll get a baseline from the market, but we’ll wait and see. If we show the property five times but don’t get an application, we know that we need to drop the price. Sometimes, we are happy and surprised with what we can get for your home.
If you think you got the price wrong on your property or you need any help with property management in Fort Worth, Texas, please contact us at Frontline Property Management. We’d be happy to help.
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How to Hire a Property Management Company in Fort Worth, Texas
A lot of times, landlords and owners looking for Fort Worth property management services will ask first about the fees that are involved in professional management. This is troubling because a landlord or a real estate investor should be asking about services first. You don’t want to spend only five minutes talking to a property manager, because then you aren’t going to get any information except for maybe what it costs. Today, we’re talking to you about the question you should be asking when you are looking for help with your Fort Worth investment.
The First 90 Days fo Fort Worth Property Management
When you contact a property management company, ask questions about the services they provide. An even better question is: Walk me through the first 90 days of our relationship. That will allow you to capture the processes involved in the management of your rental home.
The Leasing Process
You should hear how a property manager will onboard your property, which is really detailed. It involves pricing and inspections, and hearing about the process can really give you an idea of what your manager will do to get that property ready for rent. It will also uncover the leasing process. A lot goes into leasing. You’ll want to know where the property will be advertised, how and when will pictures be taken, and other things that go into leasing.
The Tenant Onboarding Process
A landlord will also want to uncover what goes into the tenant onboarding process. Once an applicant is ready to go into your house, how does your property manager qualify the tenant and assure you that it’s a good one? They also need a process for letting tenants know where and how they pay rent every month. Some of the local Fort Worth property management companies we compete with don’t have physical locations. That makes it very difficult for some tenants to pay. At Frontline, we have about six different ways that people can pay rent, including online and at our dropbox. Understanding owner distribution is also critical; how and when do you get paid?
All of these questions are important, so instead of asking about fees, ask about the cycle for 90 days of management. If that business development person cannot articulate systems, it’s probably not a good fit for you. Once you’ve discovered what happens in the first 90 days, ask about fees and match the fees to the services. You really do get what you pay for with property management in Fort Worth.
Get Help!
We’ll tell you about what you can expect as a real estate investor in the first 90 days of working with us.
Why Choose Frontline Property Management, Inc.
Frontline Property Management is a 30-year old management company in the Fort Worth area. We want to tell you why you should use us as your turnkey Fort Worth investment team. Before we go forward, we need to take a step back and tell you why our model works so well for landlords.
Real Estate Investing and the Importance of Systems
There was a day when my partner and I felt like our systems weren’t keeping up with the services we wanted to provide our clients. So we read The E-Myth Revisited: Why Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, by Michael Gerber. After reading this, we got busy. We got to work writing systems and procedures that would help us design the services we wanted to offer as a Fort Worth property management company.
Partnership with Visions Realty and Investments
So rather than having other companies sell into our portfolio, we prefer to work hand in hand with our sister company, Vision Realty and Investments. We work together as a team to design a portfolio that meets your needs as a real estate investor. If you are on our preferred investor list, you could potentially obtain properties that already exist in our portfolio. This is important because we have a lot of landlord contacts and owners who have already invested, and maybe they have taken their time and been in the market or five, six, or seven years, and they’re ready to sell. Those properties come available on a monthly basis in our portfolio and you can them through Visions Realty and Investments.
Identifying Fort Worth Investment Opportunities
So we’ve reverse-engineered this process. We work to find kick-butt investment properties in the marketplace that are in a high livability index in our favorite neighborhoods. Once we find these properties, Vision Realty agents and Frontline property management professionals tour the properties together and we give them thumbs up or thumbs down. If they get a thumbs down, there might just be a little rehab necessary, and we match those properties with our preferred investor list. Sometimes the capabilities of one investor are different from the capabilities of another, so we do a careful matching process.
What to Expect with Real Estate Investing
As a new real estate investor, you’ll attend an orientation with our sales group. This takes about an hour and we go through all the aspects of the process, including the ins and the outs of investing. Then once you do solidify that first property with us, our property management skills come in. You’ll attend a 30-minute owner orientation that will take you through the first 90 days of what to expect for property management services. These orientations provide opportunities for you to ask questions and get to know the process before you jump in.
