How Remote Can You Go? Running a Virtual Property Management Business Without Sacrificing Service

Here at Fourandhalf, we love our sixth-floor office that looks out over Silicon Valley, and we find it helpful to have everyone in the same place. But, we often wonder whether it would be possible to build a property management business that is completely virtual. The Property Management Show received an email from a listener named Nicholas who wanted to know if it would be possible to start and run a property management company without a physical office. Can it be done virtually? We reached out to a company that’s doing it, and our guests today are Noel Pulanco and Mike Sargent from HomeQwik. They also run yesVIRTUAL, a business providing highly trained virtual assistants to property management companies. The Thought Process Behind Going Virtual Leasing agents and property managers spend a lot of time in the field already. There are so many tasks that don’t even require a desk: following up on leads, taking marketing photos of properties, posting signs, leaving keys in lockboxes, and meeting with renters. All of these things happen outside of the office. Inside the office is where most of the customer service happens. If you’re transitioning those customer service tasks to virtual assistants already, as HomeQwik had begun doing, there are very few reasons to keep a physical office. Renting office space costs a lot of money, so moving all of your current office-based staff can save money and provide flexibility to your employees. As long as you have good software, good systems, and processes that work, you can keep your company virtual and mobile. Pre-sale Considerations When Running a Virtual Property Management Business Having a physical office does not provide any advantages when it comes to signing new owners. There might be a tendency for people to hire you based on where your office is. You might attract owners who are within five miles of your office just because they know you are there. But, those are easy clients. And, it really doesn’t matter how close you are to the properties you manage when you’re not the one fixing the garbage disposal or locking the tenants out. It’s probably rare that you meet with owners at your office. Most property owners want to meet at the property. You’ll want to see the home, walk through the property, and talk about the necessary repairs and the most advantageous marketing strategies. You don’t have to bring potential owners into an office in order to manage their homes. You can take them out for coffee or to lunch. Usually, you’re going to meet at their property. However, your website will need a physical address. Without a physical tie-in, it’s hard to rank a website. So, you’ll want to use your home office. Tie yourself to a physical address so you don’t have problems ranking your website and getting leads and traction. Anchor your office somewhere, even if it’s not a physical office where your entire staff goes. Post-sale Considerations When Running a Virtual Property Management Business After you’ve landed new business, you can implement systems to manage properties and tenants. There doesn’t need to be paperwork, for example. DocuSign allows you to get documents back and forth through email. That doesn’t require a physical office. All of the tenant application and screening processes can also be done online. There’s no need for a tenant to walk into your office to talk about a property or an application. You can collect virtual copies of identification and have conversations over the p...