How Clean is your House?

The end of the first quarter is upon us and now is as good a time as any to take stock of the health of your rent roll and ensure that every box is checked where it can be so that you can be on track to achieving your 2016 goals.

With that in mind, when was the last time that you cleaned house when it came to your portfolio? We spend our lives wrapped up taking care of other people’s homes and ensuring that they have a clean bill of health, however when did you last give yours a good clean?

Some areas that you might like to take a look at when it comes to your portfolio could include:

·         Rent Reviews and Lease renewals – are they all in line with the current market and tenants on fixed term leases? Especially those where their Landlord Insurance have this as a requirement of coverage.

·         Repairs and maintenance – how many outstanding work orders are currently sitting in your software? Are any of them older than 3 months or is the work still outstanding? This may need to be followed up with the tradesperson for either completion or payment of the account.

·         Routine Inspections – are there any currently outstanding and what needs to be done to get any of these up to date and inspected? It’s also a good idea to check if any properties on the rent roll do not have a date attached to them for an inspection and worst case you may discover some have not had an inspection completed in a very long time, if at all!

·         Arrears – what percentage of your tenants are in arrears, can this be improved and what percentage of those arrears are invoices outstanding?

·         Vacant properties – can any of these be marked inactive, there may also be vacated tenants and previous Owner’s that also need to be marked inactive which will assist in reflecting accurate numbers on your rent roll.

·         Files audit – compliance plays a big part in our roles as Property Managers. This compliance also comes in the forms of correctly completed documentation. Do all of your files contain a correctly completed Management Agency Agreement, Tenancy Agreement, Application Forms and a Condition Report, just to name a few.

As an extra point, you may also like to carry out a keys audit to check that we have all of those keys on file for properties managed.

Housekeeping your portfolios can assist in ensuring that you have all the necessary checks and balances in place and can assist with a smoother running rent roll reducing stress and maximising efficiency.

If you would like any assistance in your quest to achieve a clean rent roll, the team at Real+ can help with solutions to get you on track.

Heidi Walkinshaw