Lately I’ve been taking a deeper and more specific look at different aspects of property management. I thought today I would take a step back and just talk about property management from a broader scope. Today I just want to talk about some general pros and cons of being a property manager, and running a property management business.

Pros

One of the major pros about property management is that you can own your own business. This means certain levels of freedom, the ability to answer only to yourself (aside from the owner who may be your business’s client), and a much larger income potential than when working with another company. Naturally not all property managers will be business owners, but it is certainly possible and a great experience.

If you do own your own property management business, and structure that business properly, you can have all the benefits of property ownership without the risks. A property owner brings you in to manage their property – you gain a fee based on the type of management. Both you and the owner are gaining money from the property, but they have the risk, and you have the labor.

Property management is certainly interesting work – you meet all different types of people. If you manage multiple properties then its likely you will be out and about a lot, and the sense of freedom can be enjoyable.

This type of job will provide you with a large set of skills. Managing a business and managing people is both challenging and rewarding.

You can take your experience in property management and move more easily into property investment (becoming the owner even).

Cons

It is the case when you own your own business that you likely end up working long hours. Especially when you are starting out and with a service like property management, where your attention (or your company’s attention) needs to be with the property 24/7. In this case it is imperative to build up a reliable team which can allow you to extract yourself from the daily grind and run the company from a higher level – eventually you can get your hourly involvement down to whatever you wish, but starting out it is likely to be on the extreme.

Dealing with difficult individuals is the flip side of the coin to getting to meet all sorts of interesting people. It is inevitable that you will meet, and have to handle, people you do not like, people who are insulting, and/or people who are just plain difficult to please.

Getting started can be a challenge – this is the case with any service based industry, where potential property owners want to see evidence that you know what you are doing, but you may not yet have full experience to demonstrate this. It can be prudent to start out working with someone else – as an on-site manager for another company for example – to demonstrate that you have the necessary skills.

Property management is a very rewarding way to work in real estate with a low risk. You get a wide variety of experiences, and you have the opportunity to develop for yourself the kind of lifestyle that you really want to be living.