Rental Property Investment and Ownership Blog Series: Part 3 - Our Process

Welcome back to Part 3 of our series: Rental Property Investment and Ownership.  If you missed our first posts, you can read up on the Current State of the Rental Market here and our tips and tricks on how to maximize your rental income here.  Next month?  We'll be helping you figure out what rental company is best for you and your specific needs.

Part 3: Our Onboarding Process

When people are beginning the process of seeking a Property Manager for their home, many don’t quite know where to begin. That is completely normal, and we’ll walk you through how this process works with Benchmark Management!

1 | Initial Meeting

First, we like to open discussion about your property. Whether we physically walk it or review photos, we need to get eyes on the unit and its location to accurately assess demand. In these conversations, we discuss our services and offerings, as well as our contract and fee structure. This is very much an exploratory stage where we each learn about one another. It’s important to ask any questions you may have! This will ultimately begin a partnership, so understanding and communicating is important.

2 | Onboarding

The next step is onboarding. This begins with a signed agreement and from there, we introduce you to your Property Manager and their team. We continue discussion of your goals with renting and any changes that can be made to achieve them. This includes our team taking an inventory of your home and making sure it has all of the required items for renters. They'll also use this time to make any suggestions they may have on items to add to your home. We also assign a rate structure - which you can provide input on. 

3 | Maintenance Walk Through

We'll then have our Maintenance Team walk your home so they can familiarize themselves with the intricacies and unique aspects as needed.  They'll use this time to make suggestions on things that might need immediate attention and items that you might want to put on your To-Do List in the future.  We'll work with you to get everything in the home rental ready.    

4 | Listing Preparation

While the Maintenance, Property Management, and Rates teams are working behind the scenes to get the home ready, Marketing is working on the listing - scheduling professional photography and building the description for your home. Our Marketing Team will use their years of experience to write compelling copy and headlines to ensure your property is showcased the best way possible. Once all the pieces come together, your listing is ready to go live. We list your property on the leading vacation rental sites and on benchmark30a.com and garrettrealtyservices.com. Through our own websites and marketing strategy, we're able to receive nearly 70% direct bookings. 

5 | Welcome Guests

From here on out we will handle everything - just sit a back and relax as we welcome guests. You can be as involved or as distanced as you’d like. We have some owners that like regular conversations with their Property Manager to stay in the loop with their property, while other owners prefer to sit back and have a more hands-off approach.

We market your property, organize cleans, collect revenue, handle taxes, take reservations, handle 24/7 emergency service, and provide maintenance. We're a full-service management company.  Your vacation property is our passion.

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We hope that this outline on how our process works helped you in your search for the perfect rental management company. This is, of course, a very simplified version of choosing your partner in property management. There are many conversations involved, and we’re happy to have them! If you’re interested in a chat, please feel free to reach out. If you have any other questions or need advice, we are here to help.  Interested in a projection? We can provide you with one - just reach out to us at [email protected]. We’ll provide you with a projection based on deep knowledge of our own portfolio alongside outside data across all of 30A. 

Make sure to check back next month for Part 4 where we'll will focus on helping you decide which Property Management company is right for you.

Published on Friday, July 30, 2021