Lately, more and more people are renting out their private properties. This can be a whole house or apartment, a room, or even just a couch. Different types of hotel guests and travelers basically allow everyone to jump into the hospitality industry. However, the biggest chunk of the hotel market still belongs to the apartment rentals, and the people we call landlords.
Property manager ≠ Landlord
Sometimes, owning a property isn’t enough. That's why there are so many property management companies in Budapest that would gladly like to take over your apartment management. Still, there are a few distinct differences between property managers and landlords:
Property Management Systems for Landlords
Once a landlord has his business, they might think that all is going well and they can manage all the tasks. Still, in the long run, managing your own pm program might become more than a challenge.
When is it time to look for a landlord property management software?
- Most important - when you notice the lack of time. This is where property management for landlords can provide one of their greatest advantage: saving valuable time. In most cases, being a landlord is just a secondary occupation: people still go to their full-time jobs and deal with property rentals during their free time. But this also means, that such a person has to be very flexible, and should be able to deal with his tenants/guests at any given time. Meeting a person, cleaning the apartment, taking care of maintenance and the check-out process... All these tasks can be very hectic, and it can be difficult to find time to take care of these during your usual working hours. This can get very challenging if you own several apartments, and even more so if those properties are located in various locations around the city. A PM program, however, does most of the organizing for you, allowing you, the landlord, to focus more on your full-time job, as well as organize the renting out of properties more easily.
- Social reasons. You may be a really great person, but dealing with different types of hotel guests and travelers might be not your favorite thing. A channel manager program provides all the interface your guests need, so you don’t need to deal with each booking manually: by using a property management system you will automatically see all reservations made. If meeting arriving guests or using a foreign language to communicate with them makes you even a little stressed or uncomfortable, property management services for landlords can be more than a big help.
- Overbookings. If you are dealing with listings manually, there is a big chance you can miss some updates on your reservations, and end up being overbooked. This leads to unhappy guests, allocation problems, as well as the risk of getting bad hotel guest reviews. Most Apartment rentals are using Airbnb as their main sales channel, but in order to keep it updated, you need to either spend a lot of time on it, or you can get a property management system for landlords
Landlords, who decide to use a pm program, usually have no experience in any kind of property management software. Therefore, they must check and choose a solution which is easy to use and is able to fulfil their apartment rental business needs. Many PMS systems are tailored for hotels and might not be suitable for apartment rentals: they need to have certain features and should be able to sync with specific sales channels.
Well chosen property management for landlords can help in so many ways. Some pm programs can handle a full reservation cycle from booking to the guests’ check-out. Guests can book rooms online, pay and check-in online, get the key code from the apartment etc. Many tasks, which now are now being done by people, can be completed by a property management software.
