The Challenges Involved with Property Management for Small Businesses

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

Small businesses that want to manage property can find themselves dealing with a variety of big challenges. How can you combat these challenges as a small business owner and maintain your property with greater ease? Here are a few tips.

Accurately Tracking Expenses

When it comes to property management, small businesses often find it difficult to track expenses accurately, and this can ultimately result in difficulties keeping maintenance costs affordable.

By focusing on how to track your expenses consistently using property management software and accounting software, you can evaluate the income of a property versus the costs involved with maintaining and managing it.

Dealing with Damages to the Property

Another major hurdle that small businesses have to overcome when managing property is paying for damages caused to the building. Damages can be caused by natural disasters, as well as by residents, whether you’re renting it out to individuals or other small businesses.

While you can certainly send repair bills to your tenants, it’s possible that they’ll simply refuse to cover the costs. In that case, legal action would be required, but it would cause your costs to rise even further.

The key is to prevent damages from occurring in the first place. Be careful when screening and choosing tenants, and only allow those who are responsible and trustworthy to rent your space. Make sure your lease is written out clearly, and get your tenants’ signature proving that they need to pay for damages should they cause them. You can also evaluate the security deposit you charge so that it will help cover at least some of the damages more effectively.

Dealing with Complaints

Yet another major challenge in property management involves dealing with complaints. It’s inevitable that those who are using your property will complain about it at some point of another, so it’s best to have a plan for dealing with problems before they happen.

Start by trying to diffuse a problem by discussing it over the phone, but if that doesn’t work, get it all in writing. Have the resident file a formal complaint and then address it appropriately.

Hire a Receiver

Despite all of the challenges that are involved in property management for small businesses, there are steps that you can take to overcome them. For example, you can enlist the help of a receiver.

A receiver is basically an agent who’s appointed by a federal or a state court in order to maintain and preserve assets for a business. You don’t need to file for bankruptcy in order to get assistance from a local receiver, such as a California receiver. Instead, you can hire someone from FedReceiver at any time to manage your property for you in myriad cases, such as for government enforcement actions, housing sales, sales of ABC licenses, and more.

Now that you know a few of the main challenges that small businesses face when it comes to effective property management, you can do your best to avoid these challenges and overcome them.

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