What if you can't find a PM?

My house is located about 90-100ish km north of a property management place. The same firm has ALL the rentals in the next town up, which is about 120km north of their location. They also do basically all the rentals in this town too, which is 75km north of them.

Ring them up - "sorry, we don't do that town anymore, we don't have enough business there". 6 months ago they'd do it. Not now.

Noone else does that town - probably no point considering this one property manager has the entire market out this way cornered.

I just wanted figures on getting my house managed if I sold it, but apparently I *can't* get a property manager now, whereas I'd just chosen to self-manage before because they are not particularly cheap.

So does this mean my house is utterly unsellable to anyone who wants to keep the tenants but have it managed?!?! This sucks, as I have someone very interested in the house coming in a couple of days.
 
So does this mean my house is utterly unsellable to anyone who wants to keep the tenants but have it managed?

Unless the buyer is local, it's going to be pretty difficult to manage the property themselves. Obviously you can make the deal more attractive with a lower price.

Your best bet is to find local buyers and show them how easy it is to manage the property themselves (write out a couple of pages system to make it look professional).

Another option is to create a win-win situation with the former property managers. Ask them what will make it worthwhile for them? Then round up some investors with properties to manage to give them volume and increase the property management fee to make it worth their while.
 
I can't go lower without making a real loss on a house I bought in 2003 (I've already got it $20,000 lower than the REA appraisal and half the listed price of similar size but not as nice houses in the same town), local buyers won't touch the town with a bargepole as it is waaaay one of the most expensive houses in the town simply because it is such a good quality house so I'm targetting non-local buyers who are more used to 6 figure houses than 5 figure ones, and the previous PM I rang back again and was simply told "my boss says we won't manage in that town anymore, there's no business there". They already take 20% of the rent overall as a standard fee, sweeten it to 25% or 30% and who in their right mind would buy this house just to fork over everything to a PM? The gross yield is only 8% so that kind of PM fee is a nasty hit to the net yield.

The only options are to sell it to someone who is willing to self-manage, or with a very long settlement to take it to the end of the lease with vacant possession. Or beat "the boss" over the head to take an extra property that is firmly within their usual area, just not in a town they want to take on :mad: Or of course sell it to an OO and bribe the tenants to leave early.

I currently collect rent via Centrepay and just wander in every few months to inspect it. It is very low involvement and for me is a 20% gross yield, I just want the cash lump sum not a trickle of rent as I'm having "issues" getting a loan at the moment.
 
Relfy, personally I would not be telling the interested person about the PM problems unless they asked. I would simply be telling them that you self manage, and tell them what you do in order to do this. It is obviously working for you, and who knows it may work for them too. I have heard of people that do self manage remotely, so for all you know, these people may be looking to do this, or perhaps, keeping the property so they can move into it in the near future.

If they ask about Agents in the area, you can honestly let them know which ones service the area and let them take it from there.
 
I was just trying to get all the facts beforehand ... was expecting to get told something like "oh, 1 week's rent to switch to a PM" not "sod off we don't do your town anymore".

On the bright side, I now know that they'll be up for $1955 stamp duty, and that it only costs $350 to get a private sale contract drawn up - I didn't know that before! :)

and $1350 in bank break and security switch fees for me
 
And of course, for all that they are *very* interested in the house, guess what is going to cost me the sale? The tenants. With 6 months remaining on a fixed lease.

If you leave a house empty for years while it is for sale, you risk vandalism, insurance excess goes through the roof and of course you pay all expenses.

Get tenants in you make a nice profit, insurance goes down, people there to weed the garden and stuff but the house is impossible to sell.

I really really really want to sell this house so we can actually build a new house without pain .. selling my current house is would net us far more money but is even trickier as we can't have a gap between selling it and the new house arriving.
 
Why would anyone in their right mind want to buy your property as an IP if there are so little job prospects out there?
 
Pensioners can afford it just fine, you don't need a job to afford a rental (or to buy this house, since its cheaper to buy than rent). These cheap towns attract pensioners - aged pension, disability pension, carers pension, single parent's pension. Pensions are all over the $600pf mark, tax free, more than enough to afford $110pw rent and you get rent assistance. Especially with two people living there - $55pw each.

My tenants are on disability/carers. He's legally blind, she's his carer. They're too young for the aged pension. Unsurprisingly, the last census for that town has all but 5 people earning pension level income and the others are the people who own businesses.

There actually are loads of jobs out this way with the wind farms - high paying ones too - and I did try to get a wind farm worker in but the wind farm company HR people didn't need any houses at that point, especially with 15 minutes away from their HQ being a bit tooooo far to go when you can pay $100 a night at the pub 2 minutes away :rolleyes:

Its amazing how 'small' people's worlds become in the country. 10-15 minute drives in the city are commonplace, but in the country that distance suddenly becomes an insurmountable obstacle that noone is willing to consider, and makes the median house/rent price in the two towns 15 mins from here around 1/3 the median here. Also means all the low income people and renters have drifted to the other two towns and all the rich 'snobby' types live here, which just compounds the demographic split and the reluctance for people with money to even consider the two cheaper towns.
 
They are all reasons I wouldn't be looking for capital growth there, I even shunned Mount Isa (high income) as a place to invest and decided to stick with the capital cities only.

I was trying to make the point you'd be more likely to sell it someone as a PPOR, some people do live out there afterall.
 
Yeah, capital gain sucks there and its an ideal PPoR, especially for someone on a pension or who works from home online (which was us, and there's a few others in the town who do that too). I'm just peeved at the rock-and-hard place of vacant to sell vs tenants to pay the bills. I never bought it as an IP and I was planning to keep it long enough that capital gain would cancel out the renos. I bought it as a cheap retreat in the bush, not an investment.

I'm probably going to have better luck as it gets closer to the end of their lease and a long settlement becomes an option, or when they go off fixed and onto periodic and 60 day notice becomes an option.

I can still get our 40% deposit together for the new place just by pulling a little equity from our two existing houses (I don't want to x-coll THREE freakin properties) so I don't *need* to sell it but it would be soooooooo much easier if this house would sell!

*wanders off mumbling*
 
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