A property management fee is a small price to pay by a property owner if one does his/her homework and chooses the right management company.  The way I see it, a property manager has two main jobs: the first is to remove all stress and responsiblity related to managing a property from the property owner and the second is to save the property owner money.  In this post, I’d like to talk about the latter, and why a good property manager is worth their weight in gold.

No matter what job I am doing for a client, I have their fiscal best interest in mind.  From changing a light bulb, to securing the premises, I aim to do it in a way that saves them money.  One might think this sounds a little ridiculous, but allow me to give you an example to prove my point.

I manage a six story walk-up apartment building with 48 units (eight per floor).  When I took on the management of this building, the average electric bill was approximately $520 per month.  The first thing I did was assess what was using electricity.  This was a pretty straight forward case, as is with most apartment buildings.  The biggest draw was the common area lighting, which consisted of 4 surface mount lights on each floor, 6 surface mount lights in each of two stairwells, 1 light in the main vestibule, and 4 outdoor flood lights in the front of the building.  There were also 2 gas boilers and a gas powered furnace for the building, which draw a negligible amount of electricity.  Because the building was negelected, their was an assortment of bulb types and sizes being used and the outdoor lighting was on 24 hours a day.

Right off the bat, I figured that I could cut the electic bill down by 20% by employing new, energy efficient, low wattage light bulbs and installing a daylight sensor for the outdoor flood lights so that they are only illuminated when it’s dark outside.  The cost of all new bulbs was $90, the cost of the sensor was $22, and the installation was another $120.

I was slightly off in my original assessment.  The electric bill was $406 for the first full month after the changes, which translates to a savings of 22%!  So it took 2 months for my client to recoupe the $232 that was spent to change the bulbs and install the sensor.  The next 10 months of the year was all SAVINGS!  This amounted to a savings of $1,140 the first year.

I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s better to put that money in your bank account than in the utility company’s?  Plus, we did our small part in saving the planet.

This is just one of the many money saving tricks D&M Real Estate has up its sleeve.

Contact D&M  Real Estate now so that we can start saving you money!