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Last Updated on January 20, 2024 by Work In My Pajamas
East London is a district of London that has seen a recent market explode over the past 10 years, and that is online rental properties. Many people with properties are looking to list their rooms or houses on rental websites like Airbnb or Booking.com and make continuous income from their assets.
According to Statista, holiday home rentals are an industry that will be worth 74 billion US dollars by 2023. It’s a sector that is only going to grow, so if you’re looking for work that you can do from your own home, you might want to consider cashing in on this trend and offering your services as a rental property manager. All you need is a laptop and a mobile phone and you can start generating income quickly.
Use Your Experience (Or Somebody Else’s)
In an ideal world, you’d have some experience managing rental properties. If not you should stop what you’re doing and read, read, read. There are countless articles about managing properties, but in the contemporary climate things are a bit different. A property manager can look at how to handle the nitty-gritty end of the business for somebody else and keep their review ratings high. Read as much as you can about how to boost your ratings.
Know How to Manage
You’ll find that there are two sure-fire ways to do this: add personal touches and keep the property clean and hygienic. You should develop a relationship with two services: deep-cleaners and normal cleaners. Both of these should be local and easy to find with a search like: ‘carpet cleaners East London’, and be able to fit into your busy schedule. Deep cleans only need to happen every 6 months, but your relationship with your normal cleaner should be very intimate.
Additionally, why not leave some bits of food or a bottle of wine for every guest? If this sounds quite expensive, consider that you can crunch the numbers, get estimates and then work out how much commission you should get for every guest. 20-40% is fair if you’re completely managing the property (including AirBnb’s commission). If it’s a bigger property consider how cleaning costs will change.
Check-In and Check-Out
If possible integrate your cleaners into a property maintenance system – get them to help check that there are no damages and that guests have checked out properly.
You should also start thinking about property management tools. There are many high-tech helpers that allow you to manage the intricacies of rentals. These can include the physical (e.g. smart-locks so you don’t have to be there physically during check-in) or software that helps you manage payment and cleaning rotas.
The great thing about rental management is scalability. You can start off managing a few properties, but with the experience of doing so (and a great, trustworthy team of cleaners) you can scale up with ease. In a matter of months, if you’re a proficient property manager, it can become your full-time job.
