Are you unsure whether you’re hiring a “Property Manager” or a “Rental
Agent”? You’re not alone in your confusion. People use both terms to describe a
professional who rents property, manages the ongoing tenant relationship, and
maintains the properties under their care.
If a Romanian Property landlord hires someone to manage “renting only”
it makes sense to refer to that person as a “Rental Agent” or “leasing agent”
rather than as a property manager. Property Managers tend to vary but the better equipped ones can do both, and have the flexibility to create a tailored service contract for you. Howeer, oyu need to check if they have the resource for both roles!
Based on what you need, some agents do specialise in only renting & others still in only Property Management. These agents can be (but are not always) adept at marketing properties, showing them, and working with prospective tenants to get vacancies filled. This level of professionalism is still not widely common in Romania yet. Property Managers may excel more at other aspects of rental management, such as establishing a rapport with tenants, building relationships with vendors, being proactive with maintenance, and working to quickly resolve any issues.
This is an important but often misunderstood function/ service difference. At White Mountain for example, the Property Manager & the Rental Negotiators are different people. The Property Manager almost never ever gets involved in Rental or Sales work & vice versa.
The Rental team focus exclusively on advertising & finding tenants & getting the rental price right.
The Property Manager concentrates on administering the property including keeping it above zero degrees in winter, secure, mail checked, bills paid & an eye on security matters & once the tenant is in, managing the relationship thereafter, including collecting rent, ensuring all utility bills are up to date each month might help with background tenant checks, but not more.
A good romanian real estate agent who specialises in rental can usually get a property rented within 40 to 55 days if the rental price is considered fair, depending on the market at the time for a given type of property. Particularly talented Rental Agents can generally fill vacancies twice as fast as their competitors for desirable property. Meanwhile, a property manager who’s more expert at maintenance can often get renovation, decoration, furnishing work done for as little as half the going market rate.
When choosing a property manager, be careful you are not locking yourself out of working with other agents – why would you?. One of the more respected Property Managers (besides us of course) actively promotes the fact they are only Property Managers & not Rental Agents, yet actually contractually forbids its landlords to find their own tenants or work with other agents directly. This is highly risky because you are assuming the Property Manager is also a good Rental Negotiator with the resources to reach the public & that is not always likely to be true.
Our approach is more open. Not only do we have 2 Rental Negotiators at the time of writing, & a Property Manager, but we actively engage with 2 competitor agents each week to share our database of slow-to-solve rental & sales property. One of these competitors is part of an international chain, with offices accross Romania, so your property exposure is considerable.
When renting your property, it is important to understand rental market conditions in Romania, as well as what your personal priorities are, in order to hire the professional whose strengths best suit your needs. Should you wish further clarification on how
White Mountain can assist you, please contact me directly & I will be happy to answer your questions.
Damian Galvin, Founder, White Mountain Property
