You may be an aspiring property manager but also wish to spend most of your life traveling. Although it’s not popular, traveling property management is one of the biggest parts of the real estate industry.
Not every property management works only locally, in fact, as a property management company grows, like many other businesses, it tries to cover the entire nation. Therefore many property management companies hire local and traveling property managers to take care of rental businesses over the country.
What is a traveling property manager?
A traveling property manager is not much different from a regular local property manager, as your responsibilities include most of the same pointers. However, traveling property management might be a bit more fun and a bit more exhausting for some.
As a traveling property manager, you would be collecting rent, conducting inspections and negotiations with tenants, and operating different types of rentals as you would as a local property manager, but in this case, you would do all of that while also traveling around the nation.
What are the responsibilities of a traveling property manager?
The list of responsibilities might grow for a traveling property manager as you would have to deal with a lot of issues on your own without the help of your team at your office. While getting assistance remotely is almost effortless today, it’s still a bit more difficult than at the office.
You would have to manage long-term assets, address resident concerns, and push the growth of property value while also moving from one city to another every few days. You would have to continuously take care of documents of various rental properties and leasings.
The Benefits of traveling the nation as a traveling property manager
Traveling the nation as a traveling property manager has its advantages and disadvantages for those who love to travel and wish to be professional property managers. We can start by discussing the advantages of traveling the nation while also completing a variety of tasks for multiple different clients.
- Payment
On average, property managers make less money per year than traveling property managers. According to Glassdoor statistics, property managers make $49 342 in the US per year, while traveling property managers make $73 603 annually.
Therefore, while the responsibilities of a traveling property manager might be more, the compensation is competitive. Depending on your values and drive, the salary might or might not be worth it.
- Traveling with no expenses
This is a dream job for active and curious people. Property management companies send their traveling property managers on work trips while also covering hotel, Airbnb, or apartment expenses, utilities, and travel costs. If you own a car, the property management company will most likely cover the gas costs as they will if you have to use a rental car.
While not every property management company covers the food and airfare expenses, a lot of them do with or without negotiations. So, if you love to travel on business and visit multiple regions of your country often and if you get easily bored by staying in one place, traveling property management is the job for you.
Not only will you be able to achieve your dream of traveling around all of the time, but you will also be able to do it for free, while getting paid, and doing the job you love.
- Work Experience
The more duties you have, the greater your work experience will be. By completing property management tasks while also traveling from one city to another almost every day, you will develop the skill of working under pressure.
You will gain a lot of knowledge about each city’s policies and laws. You must know that each state has its own legal system, this applies to rental properties as well. By traveling from one state to another, you will gain knowledge of each region’s property management policies.
This will make you a more reliable and desirable candidate for property management companies and more companies in the industry will be willing to hire you if you have a professional background of traveling the nation for work.
- Life Experience
Traveling through cities every day will also help you gain experience in life. You will be able to communicate with people in different living situations and different circumstances. Therefore, you will gain the skill to determine personalities and it will make you better at social events.
You will be able to make friends in multiple cities and you will also be able to learn about various cultures, ethnicities, and lifestyles. Traveling the nation as a traveling property manager will be beneficial for you as you will visit multiple cities, restaurants, and attractions.
The disadvantages of traveling the nation as a traveling property manager
On the other hand, you might not enjoy going from town to town every day to complete various tasks. There are multiple reasons why there are more local property managers than traveling property managers and why their salaries are different most of the time.
- A greater & more tiresome list of responsibilities
Completing tasks while visiting several locations in your area daily gets tiring and completing them while visiting locations around the nation gets exhausting.
As we already mentioned, traveling property managers have most of the same responsibilities as local property managers with the addition of having to move around the nation every day. Although the salary might be higher, there is a reason for it.
Traveling property managers must keep track of different rentals while on the road. This will make the job much more difficult. Moreover, if you are working while traveling, you will constantly feel tired and barely find any time to rest and relax.
- You’re Always On The Road
Being on the road might be a dream for some, but it’s not always as fun as it was for the Winchester brothers in Supernatural. You will have to work all of the time, therefore, you will not have time to go sightseeing very often, and when you do, you will be too exhausted to do so. Therefore, you might get very bored if you don’t travel with things to help you pass time.
What’s more, is that you will have to say goodbye to your home most of the time. Traveling property managers rarely get to see their friends and family members at special events. Moreover, if you are a romantic at heart, you will have a hard time finding a partner and settling down.
If you don’t get homesick easily, it doesn’t sound very bad, however, you might start missing relaxation at home with your loved ones. Being on the road all the time might sound romantic if you are a fan of Kerouac, but you might get very lonely and although you might make many friends in different cities, you will only see them a handful of times each month and barely will have any time to get to know them well.
Final Thoughts
Traveling the nation as a traveling property manager might be a dream to some and a nightmare to others.
If you are a property manager and love your job and love to travel, like being alone, and don’t get homesick easily, you will have no problem going around from one city to another, collecting rent, and operating rental properties. Not only will you travel for free but you will also get fair compensation.
Although some pointers made above might scare you, you should remember that we live in an era where you can communicate with friends and family using the internet any time of the day from anywhere in the world. Therefore, you might not get very bored and lonely as a traveling property manager after all.