Rental property management
 

We are in the process of purchasing our first Villages home and are planning on renting it out until we can come there full time. We are not sure if it’s better to use The Villages Property Mgmt or do it ourselves....thoughts?

I would say that unless I was going to be in TV during the rental season, I'd use a management company. They get a good chunk of money for what they do, but it's about as worry free as you can get. Also, as a renter, it seems to me that while the management companies get their dough, the price of the rentals are higher to offset the management expense. I think the market for rentals is strong, at least it was before COVID.

Yourself, with a good home watch and using the4rent
Site, it’s very easy. Plus you have total control over who rents. If you rent long term, unfurnished it’s less money out of your pocket

But what happens if something breaks and needs a repair and you are far away?

Hundreds in TV use rental sights and don’t live in TV. A good home watch person is key. Many on this site have experience.
We owned a PV for 4 years and rented long term while living long distance with zero problems.

If I travel to Gainesville for a few days and something goes wrong at my house, I can have someone there in 24 hours or less, to do a repair. I have bought major appliances delivered, had sprinkler system repaired, HVAC worked on, and screens replaced in birdcage, and didn’t have to be here. Been here since 07, have a long list of who I can count on for everything. Many here keep tabs on their homes from anywhere. Internet is your friend

Absolutely do it yourself. Of all of the 'professional ' firms the villages affiliate firm is the worst. TV uses a simple schedule to price your home. Is there something special about your home making it more desirable to rent? The Villages Property Management doesn't care, here is the schedule. For example designers are xxx .a month for prime season. They forbid you to offer a cart with your rental, so they are forced to use villages golf carts. Is there something special you want mentioned in your ad copy? Professionals don't care, this is what we write. Think about it, most renters don't care what the name of your home model is, they want to know how close the the square, name of nearest GC, and so on.

All firms charge you a percentage of rent, typically 17%. They often force you to use their in house services for home watch, etc. Usually these services are overpriced and sub par performers.

Now if you diy then you can use dynamic pricing. You can wait to rent your home after most homes are rented and thus get a higher price for the property. There is a rush at certain times to list homes and rent for next year's prime season.

By careful diy property management I achieved (in a non covid year) 85% occupancy.

I have used The Villages Hometown Property for 3 years. Living out of state it made my choice easy. Last thing I wanted was a call about a toilet that didn’t flush, a torn screen a leaky faucet. I asked them for a suggested rental price and was allowed to pick what I wanted to rent my place for. In short for several months all I did was check my bank account and see the deposits and no headaches. I would do it again.

2 things, no Canadian renters this year and moratorium on evictions. I would suggest using the management companies, with Hometown if the tenant is not credit worthy they get your rent up front in full. You'll sleep a little better.

Why no Canucks ? They can fly or take a train here (can't drive) and can have their "stuff" including car shipped (or rent a car). Also, this expires on Sept 21 unless they extend it. There may be less because of the hassle but it's not impossible. There is no rental moratrium in FL it seems either as it expired on 8/31 (unless it was extended).

Q: What will this mean for airline travel and other travel across the border? (From CA to US)

A: This action does not apply to entry into the United States from Canada via air, rail, or sea travel at this time, but does apply to commuter rail and ferry travel.

Travel Restrictions Fact Sheet | U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Canada

With no moratorium in place for FL renters, 'We expect a tsunami of evictions' | Florida Phoenix

Why no Canadian renters?

Border closure and travel advisory is expected to be extended to end of November at least. In addition, all Canadians require emergency medical insurance which gets somewhat problematic with this Covid issue. Yes some insurance companies are beginning to offer some type of Covid specific coverage but suspect it will be expensive and one must read the fine print very closely. As you pointed out, there are ways around driving down who wants the additional hassle?

GOften this is the greatest fear of owners. Renters call the Home watch people not you. Home watch for rental owners is not the same level of service as home watch for a seasonal owner. It is important to be cognizant of how often these maintenance calls come in. For me it was slightly less than once a year. What these home watch people cannot do is handle the financial side. They can advise you if your home is in good shape to return the deposit. They can't collect rent or return the deposit, just tell you the condition.

For several months in 2019 until April 2020 I managed my rental while I was in Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. So, yes managing a rental long distance can work.

Who do you use for screen repair?

Down home Properties management is great

Don’t do it yourselves. I suggest using an outside Realtor management company.

DHP is better than TV. Custom written ads, calls you about inquiries and exceptions for approval first. Much more flexible

Not true about "no Canadian renters this year". I'm flying down and so are 7 friends I know. We can't cross the border in a car, but can fly. Why not in a car is beyond all logic. Seems a lot safer way to travel and stay healthy to me, but the point is we are finding our way down.

Medipac is offering Covid coverage as well as all normal coverage. Not a hassle. Staying in the freezing cold for 6 months is a hassle. My landlady just offered me a golf cart since I will not have my car. :bigbow:

I live in SC and have rented my courtyard villa myself since 2012 without incident. I use Villagers4rent to advertise and am booked a year out. I rent Jan-March but many renters want 6 mo. Good luck

Down Home Property Management
 

I can highly recommend Down Home Property Management (352) 753-0976

They are very easy to work with and very responsive when something comes up while you are away.

We rented our house on our own for 3 1/2 years before making it our permanent home. We used villagershomes4rent.com for advertising. The annual fee to use this site was $125. The site was user friendly and we had great success. We usually rented our home for 6-7 months per year. We visited and used it ourselves at other times during the year as we lived about 6 hours away at the time. By going this route, we were not restricted to certain requirements imposed by renting through The Villages.

As far as minor repairs, if there were problems during the times that tenants were there, we were able to arrange for repairmen to schedule a time that tenant was available. This was never a problem as the tenant usually needed the repair completed (example, the freezer ice maker was leaking and not making ice correctly).

The Villages Community Watch provides good service. Personnel called us a couple of times when tenants went to bed and left the garage door open. We also had good neighbors who would contact us for unusual situations (such as when our sprinkler system had leaks).

Renting yourself can be done — it takes a little work because it basically becomes a business. If you go this route, the site I mentioned above has great information available to guide you through the process and requirements.

That is good news as I have family there, but if you were to fly back to Canada does that get you a 2 week self quarantine?

Whatever you do, do not use Down Home Properties.

no to village property management. do it yourself

Not all companies charge a % of rent.
Check www.VillagersVacationHomeRentals.com, $100/mth Flat Fee. Been in business 6+ yrs and Manages 40+ Properties, they also do SnowBird Services.

To the original poster:

You should be aware that there are two basic types of rentals. Long term (usually unfurnished) and furnished short term monthly rentals. Most of the comments so far that provide a miniscule level of detail are referring to monthly rentals. You can get a better response if we know What your intent is.

What sort of rental will you have?

I'm glad we are all in agreement here.

Interesting. He is a realtor at Black Tie real estate. He offers two fee structures for his services, flat rate or another where he takes 10% of all rent. Could be an option

I have had experience with two companies.

I do not recommend White Pelican. It was a very, very bad experience.

I do recommend Downhome Properties. Overall, a very good experiences.

The Villages itself has a rental program but it takes a greater percent of your rental money than other services, or did 3 years ago when I looked into them. Also they are very strict. An example is that I had a golf cart, but they would not let me use it to attract renters, I would have had to pay to store it somewhere.

Renters did not damage my house beyond breaking a soup bowl and leaving a brown stain on the bathroom floor. Well worth the thousands I gained in rental income. But its up to you - be well insured if you take renters in any case.

I would not recommend The Villages Hometown Property Mgmt unless you are OK with only getting it rented from Jan-Apr. We just got out of a 15 month contract with them. Besides the high season, we had 3 WEEKS rental the rest of the year. A total of less than $1K. Meanwhile, I had to keep cable/internet, etc, that whole time. Absolutely no marketing. They talked a big game (their salespeople) and did nothing. This was last year - pre-COVID. We had a newly furnished place in Pine Ridge - very central and nice. Lack of service with a 20% price tag. Oh, and they would not do anything when half of my towels disappeared!

Your home watch people help with that. We rented our home for 2 years & used 4rent. The Villages property wanted us to pay $100 a night when we came to OUR OWN HOUSE!

Canadians in TV
 

From what I have been hearing, it is not access that is the problem but getting medical coverage while out of Canada. They cannot get the insurance they need if they get sick outside of their country because of their socialized medical plan.

If you do a short term rental (less than 6 months), you'll need to pay Florida state rental tax. We only do long term rentals, or over a six month lease on our rentals although you get higher monthly rents for short term rentals November thru March timeframe. We use a property management firm other than TV since they meet the people in person, look and check out any animals they might have, and do a person to person interview. :)

Another reason not to use Villages Hometown Management is they will take (sue you for) 6% of your sales price if you sell the home six months after you are done with the contract with them. Sell to anyone using any real estate agent from any firm.

That's right 6% commission for not selling your home, not marketing it for doing nothing at all other than including It in your contract.

Now it's not likely that you will sell within six months but who is willing to risk that for no reason at all and be charged the highest property management fee of any firm in TV?

Please do it yourselves ! I was a renter they them they provide no services for the exorbitant fee they charged. I rented a villa which was old the toilets and sewer backed up 3 times they never fixed it the 4th time they dug outside pipe had exploded ! They tried to charge me 500-!

You want that grief?
Stay away from anything villages

Welcome to The Villages - is a very beautiful place to live! Especially if you are golfers. If not there is still so many things to do and enjoy your calendar will be full!
We've been renting out three properties here in TV for the last 4 years, with the 1st two years handled by Down Home Properties which were a total disaster from day one!. But honestly none of the Property Managers around TV are worth the money including The Villages who are probably the best except very expensive and difficult to deal with.
The last two years we switched all of our Rentals to Long Term Leases, manage the process ourselves, and regret not managing them ourselves from the beginning.
There are a number of websites avail to you to find good renters (Zillow is very good) and there are at least 3 others.

Rental property management
 

We went with The Villages Property Management when we first bought our rental property here, but were living in Virginia. They took a large percentage of what we made in rental revenue, but didn't keep the property rented every month during prime season (we understood that it would likely not be rented during the warmer months). We were very unhappy with them; particularly when they wouldn't let us stay in our own property during a month when they had failed to obtain a renter for us. We have been much happier, and have made more money doing it ourselves. It's actually been much easier doing it this way than we had anticipated. Message me if you would like more information.

I would beg to differ. The founders of this company are wonderful. But, they turned it over to their daughters. They made an absolute hash of it.

I am an out of town owner. I had a new house. Here is what Down Home did. They turned the sprinkler up to full blast. When the rainy season hit, I asked them to turn it down. They did not. So, I had huge bills. I left many phone messages (no one picked up the phone). I emailed repeatedly. Absolutely no contact from them.

Since it was a new home, I paid an inspector to go out there and check the home for warranty problems. Down Home never forwarded the report to the warranty department.

Finally, and I do mean after months, I got a response from Down Home. The mother (founder) of Down Home was very apologetic. She returned the monies that she took from the rental payments for the months. But, I was stuck with the water bills and the lack of warranty coverage.

Oh...one of the daughters finally apologized...you know ...office mishaps and such.

Nope...not a company I would put on my list.

But, they are nice people! Just terribly incompetent when I used their services (which was based on a recommendation from a Villages Salesperson). I sincerely hope they are more competent now!

I now manage the property myself. I am still out of town. But, here is what I did. I found some great long term renters. I also found a very good handyman who I can call who will go out there and do what is needed. So far, I have had very limited need of him. But, the arrangement works out well. I do not think I would be comfortable with this arrangement if I was just doing seasonal rentals or had a lot of turnover.

LOL... Now that is funny! When have any Villagers been in agreement. If you get three Villagers together, you wind up with five different opinions! :)

I have a rently in TV. Last year was my first year renting it. I guess the first question would be do you want to use it. You can rent it long tem a year at time or do a vacation rental where you could use it when it is not rented. I have mine as a vacation rental and i use it when it is not rented. I interviewed 2 property managers TV and Hometown property management. TV property management is very restrictive what you can have in the house and the will nickel and dime your for everything. Home town is less restrictive. I choose to do it myself. It was a lot easier then I thought it would be. It gives you the flexibility to rise on lower rates depending on the demand. A few things if you do it yourself. I do not live close I am in Chicago. So you have to make sure you find a good dependable handyman and a good cleaning service. Also a couple other suggestion would be a wifi lock that you can change the add passcodes or delete passcode from anywhere. If you don't have a wifi lock how are the people going to get in. If you are able to answer question for the renters in a reasonable time frame . Also you have to get familiar with how the lifestyle ID's work. Because you will have to get them for the renter. It is pretty easy once you learn how it works and the tv office is very helpful . I have it listed it on **** and had great success. I guess it comes down to if you want to have control and do a little work to save the 20%+ or not to worry have the property management do everything. I would sit down with a couple property management companies they will give you a list of all the items you should have in the house. It gives you a good idea what you might have to go buy. I hope this was helpful.