Have you ever owned a mutual fund?
As an investor like me who wants to be involved in all the gritty details, I’ve never liked the concept of the mutual fund.
I don’t like the mystery behind the process.
What I mean is that as an investment, it’s a total black box.
There are some investors who just want to put the money in and hope that at the end of the day the investment grows.
The theory is that a mix of companies in a fund results in a market average that will prevent big losses that could result from investing in an individual stock.
That’s why investing in mutual funds is generally considered less risky than investing in individual stocks.
But, a mutual fund is still a black box investment.
The idea is that the fund manager will dig in and evaluate individual companies, and pick individual stocks based on their knowledge of those companies.
Recommended: How to prepare a rental property income statements?
What does all this have to do with Property Management?
Knowing how your property is doing financially can be almost as bad as knowing what’s going on with a mutual fund.
Knowledge is power when it comes to evaluating your investment, so you need the right information.
Most property management companies provide monthly statements, but some still do not.
I have written another article on the essentials of an itemized monthly statement
If your property management company does not provide a monthly statement, I have one thing to say: “Run”!
At minimum, you need to have a monthly statement so that you can track the progress of your investment.
And, you should learn how to read your monthly statement.
Getting updates 24/7.
The property management software we use to keep our financial records has an owner’s portal.
The online portal allows our owners to check in real-time to get status updates 24/7.
If you are somewhat OCD like I am, you might want to check to see whether rent got paid in one of your properties.
Or, see an expense report.
For the OCD part of you, we have our online portal.
It allows any of our owners to log in to see the current financial status of their accounts.
Owners can see any payment or expense that has been logged into our system.
Just so you can see what this looks like, I included a short video clip of the owner portal.
What the video shows are that you can see income and expenses by property for the last few months.
What is nice about looking at several months side by side is that you can start to spot trends.
Those trends are the things that can help guide you in, at the least, forming good questions for your property management company.
Or, to make decisions that will affect your return, like selling a property.
Not only can you see income and expenses, but you can also see a rent roll and outstanding balances.
You can see any pending applications that have been submitted for the property, as well as the status of the application.
In addition, you can see open work orders. You can see closed work orders.
Now, there is power in looking back to see the history of work orders for a property.
You can see if you are spending money fixing the same thing, over and over again.
Can you see how much information you can gather from the owner’s portal?
The owner’s portal allows getting an update 24/7.
That means you don’t have to wait until statement time to see what’s going on.
You don’t have to wait on hold after your call to find out if the tenant paid the rent.
You can log on with just your username and password.
If you are an existing customer and don’t know your username and password that is no problem. Just contact our office and we’ll provide you with that information.
So if you just want periodic updates, you can rely on the statements that we email to you. If you need to know something right away, you can log into the online system.
I’ve written another article about the types of reports you should be receiving from your property management company
As you can see, OKC Home Realty Services values transparency.
We offer transparency by giving our owners the information they need about the finances of their rental properties they need.
If you’d like more information about Property management Oklahoma City OK and our services, call, and fill out the contact form below.
