FAQ – Managers

What exactly is an on-site Property Manager?

The on-site property manager is the person that lives near the vacation property and acts on behalf of the owner to run the property. The tasks associated with this type of job might include; managing repairs, general maintenance, meeting the tenants, cleaning the home after use, and making general repairs when necessary. In some cases these people just act as managers and let other contractors do the actual work.

Why is there such a great need for On-Site Property Managers?

Many people have experienced or are experiencing significant reductions in income as a result of the depressed job market and the poor performing investment market. This economic recession has pushed more and more property owners to put their second homes into the rental market to help subsidize their costs of ownership. Quite simply it is very expensive to own a second property and many people can no longer afford to do so. It also becomes hard to sell a vacation property during these challenging economic times and so the only other alternative is to place it in the rental market.

This change has caused quite a problem for property owners. Most vacation properties are not located close to the homes of their owners. Why would they be? My family had a second home in Collingwood, Ontario, so that we could get away on the weekends and go skiing. What would be the purpose in having a vacation home located in Toronto, just down the block from where we normally live?

Well what does an owner do when they suddenly decide to rent out their properties? For many vacation home owners this can be quite a concern. They need the money, but they are too far away from the vacation property to manage the rental business. Well the answer of course is that they hire an on site property manager to act as their rental agent.

What is the advantage of becoming a LMFVR Network property manager?

The Last Minute Family Vacation Rental Network is a collective of Vacation Property owners and it is seeking customer service oriented people to act as on-site property managers. We carefully screen candidates from all over the world so that our property owners will have qualified, reliable, customer service oriented property management staff that are trained in property management, and we then provide them with access to all the tools, and resources they need to manage large groups of properties in their territories.

Most vacation property owners own a single vacation property. On rare occasions some may own two or perhaps a few more. This is not enough to justify and indeed pay for a full time on-site property manager. The costs for paying such a person could in fact be more then the property earns during its peak season.

We solve this problem for our Owner members by recruiting, hiring, and training property management staff in all our popular vacation markets so that our owners can easily find trusted people to look after their properties.

This is an advantage to the property managers as well in that it gives them a pool of potential clients that will their services. The LMFVR Network website is structured to easily facilitate this hiring process and to help the owners by providing software to help them monitor their investments and track the progress of their rentals.

Working as a property manager with us means you get trained on the use of our property management system and you get direct access to a pool of vacation rental owners that are actively looking for your services. The LMFVR Network website was also designed to help new property owners break into the rental business and new property owners do not usually have their own rental managers so they come to us for help!

Do I have to pay to become a property manager?

No there is no charge to apply for a property managers position. We do charge for the training courses that we offer to our less experienced new hires but these courses are not prerequisites for joining our team. They are only offered to people that are new to this field with no formal training and no real experience.

There is a nominal monthly admin charge that is paid to the LMFVR Network once you are working for us. This nominal charge (usually around $25 per month) is for the use of our system and for access to our owner’s network. This charge is only levied to your account if you are actively working as a property manager and earning an income otherwise this charge is waived.