Rental agents typically handle a wide variety of tasks for their clients, using their expertise to avoid common pitfalls, save money, and maximize profits.

Common tasks rental agents handle include:

• Pricing rental properties: An experienced rental agent will put his or her deep knowledge of your specific local market to work in pricing the monthly rent for your property in order to maximize your cash flow while keeping turnover and vacancies low.
• Advertising vacancies and showing available units: Rental agents know the best places to advertise when it comes to attracting quality tenants. And they’re available to conduct showings of your unit during business hours, in the evenings, and on weekends, so that you don’t have to be.
• Screening tenants: Rental agents often employ sophisticated scoring systems that take into account multiple factors when it comes to selecting the right tenant for your rental.
• Preparing lease contracts: Rental agents are experts at crafting clear, thorough agreements that include key policies on a wide range of issues.
• Ongoing property management: Often rental agents often offer ongoing, comprehensive rental management once your unit has been rented. This includes everything from collecting rent, managing relationships with tenants, and handling routine and emergency maintenance, to taking care of accounting and preparing yearly taxes.

Tools rental agents bring to the job:

• Local rental market expertise: Having managed dozens, if not hundreds, of rental properties over the course of their careers, experienced rental agents know how to both attract and keep the best tenants.
• Experienced maintenance crews: Rental managers typically either have in-house crews of service professionals or longstanding relationships with local vendors that allow them to take care of home maintenance—whether routine or emergency—quickly and efficiently, often at discount prices.
• Working knowledge of rental law: Landlord-tenant law is more complex and difficult to navigate than many first-time landlords realize. A good rental agent can help make sure that you stay on the right side of the law in all aspects of your rental management, from tenant screening and selection, to writing lease agreements, to property notifying tenants with regard to any number of issues that may arise, to maintaining your property in a manner that complies with local housing codes.
• Systems for rental management: Good rental agents have honed their ability to manage rental properties over years of hands-on, trial-and-error, experience.