Management Services

Our Property Management Process and Procedures

Kamehameha Realty believes in a strong client relationship when taking on management.  There are many decisions that a home owner will need to make before and during the rental process.  Our philosophy is to always explain the situation and give our recommendations and guidance.  The final decision will almost always be made by the home owner.

1. Property and Neighborhood Assessment

 The first step to determine if renting is for you is to take a look at your individual property and compare it with the rest of the neighborhood.  Your property manager will look at the condition of your unit, taking into consideration upgrades and amenities.  If any work is recommended to help you get a higher rent, it will be discussed at this time.  Based off of the condition, location, and proposed price of the rental unit, your manager will be able to give a rough estimate as to how long it will take to rent out your property

2. Unit advertising

Through our Appfolio software, we advertise your rental unit on all of the top real estate websites including Zillow, Trulia, and Hotpads just to name a few. All ads are now done online and will not cost you a penny.

3. Tenant Screening and Application Review

Once a tenant applies, we will begin our screening process.  Tenants are graded on credit, income levels, and current/previous landlord recommendations.  We generally look for gross income to be at least 3 times over the rent.  If a potential tenant passes our screening process, they will be presented to you for approval.  If there are multiple applicants to be presented, the home owner will get to choose.

Please note that as a licensed Real Estate brokerage we are bound by the federally and state mandated Landlord Tenant Code. We will not discriminate against a potential tenant based off of race, color, sex, religion, family type/size, age, disability, and national origin.

4. Lease Signing

The lease is the binding agreement between the tenant and the landlord. Our default lease will be for a year with an automatic month to month extension.  The tenant’s security deposit will be collected at this time.  Please inform your property manager if there are any specific rental terms you want added into your lease.

5. Check In Inspection

During the check in inspection, the property manager will be testing to make sure all appliances and aspects of the property work as well as taking pictures and taking notes for any type of damage. The notes and pictures will be used to analyze the condition of the property when the tenant moves out. The Inspection Report is availabe online via the Owner’s Portal.

6. Repairs and Maintenance

During tenancy, our office will help to coordinate any repairs or maintenance requests needed to keep the unit running properly.  In certain instances, items may break due to the tenant’s fault.  In these cases, the tenant will be billed instead of the owner, but the repair person or vendor will often be the judge as to who is responsible.

As long as the repair cost is less than the monthly rent, repair costs will be taken out of the rent unless you prefer to pay for it directly.

7. Reporting

Monthly statements showing rental income vs any expenses will be provided monthly.  A year end summary and 1099 tax document will also be provided to every owner.

8. Inspection

Due to our size, our company does not perform annual inspections unless requested by the owner. It is not customary to do an inspection shorter than a year’s time unless there is something suspicious going on with the tenant.

9. Check Out Inspection

The same inspection will be done at check out that was done in check in. Pictures and notes will be compared to see if the tenant caused any damage or if the property is subject to wear and tear.  Please note that tenants are allowed a certain amount of wear and tear based off of living in the property for a given amount of time.  We know well the difference between wear and tear VS damage, and will communicate it to you in order to also address the security deposit.

10. Security Deposit

The security deposit as well as a detailed description of the accounting must be returned to the leaving tenant 14 days after the end of the lease.  During these 14 days, the property manager will be working with you if needed to determine any appropriate action against the tenant.  The most common deductions taken out of the deposit include prorated rent and professional cleaning of the unit.

11. Preparing for the Next Tenant

During the move out period, it may be decided as a good opportunity to make any repairs or upgrades to help maintain or increase future rents. Options will be given at this time and it is up to the home owner to see if it is reasonable to move forward.  Please note however, it is never a “good time” to do upgrades and as property managers, we really understand this.  Foregoing upgrades and improvements for a long period of time will ultimately lead to a very large future repair cost and or decreased future monthly rents. Advertising for a new tenant will start as soon as the unit is ready to minimize any vacancy.

12. Selling Rental Property

Kamehameha Realty is a full real estate brokerage and we do participate in selling real estate. The great majority of our sales clients are our current rental clients.  If you are ever interested in selling your rental property, please let us know as there is a very good chance we will know more about your particular property than any other agent on the market if we have helped you rent it in the past.