Our Services
While the industry as a whole continues to conduct business the same way it was done a decade ago and charge the same way it always has been, we took a fresh look at what works and what doesn’t in this Internet age. As a property management company, what we do doesn’t differ much from other management companies. We all provide the same general services: find a tenant, make sure rent is paid and keep the property maintained. Where we can differentiate ourselves is how we provide these services, our communication to tenants and owners, and our fee structure. what we have built (and continue to refine) with Keystone Property Management are processes and systems that enable us to deliver these core property management services as efficiently as possible.
Traditionally, our industry charges a leasing fee (what we call Tenant Placement) and a monthly management fee both based on how much rent your property gets. For instance, the leasing fee is commonly one month’s rent and the monthly management fee is 10% of one month’s rent. However, the same set of services and work are done for all properties, so how does it make sense that one property costs $1000 to lease out while another costs $1750 and yet another is charged $3000, etc. It would be similar to you and I buying the same cup of coffee yet we’re charged based on our net worth. It just doesn’t make sense. Keystone Property Management is a little bit different in that we don’t believe that our fees should be based on how much your place rents for. So this is what we put together.
There are two phases to property management – the tenant placement phase and the monthly management phase. Please note that this fee schedule pertains to single-family homes and individual condos/townhomes. If you have a multi-family building you are looking to have managed, please contact us for a quote.
Tenant Placement
Our Tenant Placement fee without monthly Property Management is $750 per unit. Tenant placement includes taking marketing photos of the house, online marketing with all the proven sites, showing potential applicants, screening applicants, getting a lease signed, collecting move-in funds, completing a written move-in walk-through report of the house complete with photos. We finalize an action items list based on things we may find that will need to be fixed in the property and get them done in a reasonable time frame.
Our screening process is quite thorough and we use a national tenant screening firm to help gather the information we need. They provide us with credit reports, criminal background reports, court records, employment verification and current and previous landlord references. In addition to this, we may request additional documentation from the applicant once we have begun to review all the reports we receive from the tenant screening company. We have a documented acceptance criteria that we provide every applicant a copy of, however we do consider an applicant’s whole picture rather than focus on a single number such as a credit score. We have found that a credit score alone sometimes does not provide an accurate assessment of an applicant’s financial responsibility.
Monthly Management Services
We offer a flat rate for our monthly management services. Our flat rate plan is $95 per month which covers all the normal/essential services that we have to do every month. Normal/essential services each month include collecting rent, paying any property related bills/maintenance bills, generating statements, maintaining tenant and owner accounting ledgers and direct depositing funds to owners. Incidentals are things that may or may not happen in the course of the month that would need our attention, ie. appliance stops working and we arrange for repair or replacement, or if we need to inspect some damage that occurs, answering tenant issues/complaints, etc.
