Using A Realtor to Buy Investment Properties/Property Management
For owners of Asheville investment properties, one of the biggest challenges they face is, often, property management. While an Asheville investment property can be a great source of income, it can also come with a lot of headaches – finding quality tenants, maintaining properties, ensuring that repair requests are met, keeping good tenants in place and replacing those that aren’t as pleasant to work with, and more. For some investors, the constant workload is just too much. That’s where property managers like Al Sartorelli of Alpha Real Estate come in – experts in managing properties, tenants, and everything to do with Asheville investment properties, property managers like Sartorelli can make a world of difference for investment property owners.
Sartorelli, who moved to Asheville from Florida and fell into property management by way of a landscaper with whom he was working, and sees Asheville real estate in 2019 as the perfect investment opportunity – “it’s a great time to be able to profit on houses here,” he says. But, of course, doing so is a lot easier said than done, and Sartorelli feels strongly that working with a property manager can help to ease the process and make investment properties a much more desirable choice for many investors. Being a landlord isn’t for everyone, he says, which is why property managers exist.
From the other side of the equation, working as a property manager rather than in another aspect of real estate – as an agent exclusively, for example – has its benefits as well. According to Sartorelli, working as a property manager offers stability and a steady monthly income, rather than always having to chase the next deal. It’s not without its challenges, though, particularly when it comes to balancing working with both property owners and tenants. “As a real estate agent, you have a client and a customer, and to the client, you have a fiduciary obligation,” Sartorelli says. The client is either the buyer or the seller, and the agent makes only that individual their priority. In property management, however, you have not only investors as clients but also tenants as customers. “I still owe [the tenant] honesty and fairness and to have a good relationship with them,” he says, “but I don’t work for them. When it comes down to it, I always have to keep my client’s interests in mind.”
Another challenge that property managers in Asheville face is learning how to work with new and inexperienced clients to help them invest logically rather than emotionally. “If you’ve never done it before, you do make emotional decisions rather than money decisions,” Sartorelli says, and it’s important to be patient and understand your end goal. “You can’t get from A to B if you don’t know where B is,” he says, and “you want to be able to feel secure in your investment and make money, not buy yourself a job.” For these reasons, Sartorelli sees it as beneficial for most investors to work with a real estate agent when purchasing properties, and with a property manager once those properties are purchased. Working with an agent will ensure that you make good decisions about what does and doesn’t constitute a solid investment, and working with a property manager will prevent you from becoming bogged down in the daily work of maintaining an investment property rather than being able to sit back and enjoy the benefits of it. Furthermore, working with a property manager can prevent you from becoming susceptible to “the heartstrings” when dealing with tenants who may be problematic. Property managers do empathize with tenants, Sartorelli says, but they work for the investor and have their best interests in mind.
On the whole, Sartorelli loves his job and sees it as providing a valuable service to investors looking to rent out their properties. “I love what I do, I honestly do, It can be overwhelmingly stressful, but…It’s awesome when you get it right, you’re just in the flow.” As for investors, he has two pieces of advice: first, hire a property manager; and second, “put your money into things that don’t break,” and trust a good property manager to handle them if they do. This, he says, is the true beauty of working with a property management company. As the investor, you get to leave the day-to-day work and stress to the manager, while you sit back and enjoy the fruits of your investment.
To find out more about working with a property manager, contact Al Sartorelli at 828HomeSales.com or reach out to us at AVLRealEstateNews.com or by phone at 828-222-6443.
