Many of us have first-hand experience renting a home or apartment at some point in our lives. While to some, the ultimate goal may be eventual home ownership, the mortgage crisis caused by the Great Recession continues to have a lingering effect on the market, even today.

“The industry changed dramatically because of the housing crisis,” says Real Property Management Corporate CEO, Lukas Krause. “Millions of households who were typically owners are now renters. Millennials prefer renting because of the flexibility that it provides, but also they’ve not participated in the same rates because they’ve been saddled with a lot of student debt. Additionally, tighter lending practices has really limited their ability to participate in homeownership like previous generations.”

The rising number of rental properties created a renewed demand for property managers to step up to the plate. Soon, landlords began to realize that managing properties by themselves had taken toll on their real careers and family lives, creating a whole new set of unfamiliar responsibilities.

“A property manager is going to stand in your stead,” says Marcus Phillips, a Real Property Management franchise owner. “So where you normally would be doing everything that you probably don’t want to be doing, we’re going to do for you. So, we’re going to collect the rent, we’re going to monitor the tenant’s needs, so depending on what that tenant is like, personality-wise, we’re going to adapt to that to create the best tenant experience possible.”

The trend of ‘do-it-yourself’ landlording poses significant problems, especially for owners managing multiple properties or for those who live far away from their investment. Balancing the time, energy, and cost required to deal with unexpected emergencies becomes a real problem for managers who are never adequately trained for such situations.

“For ten years we managed our own property,” says Jeanette Borg, a Real Property Management client, “and we decided as we were getting older we wanted to travel a little more. Owning properties sort of confines you to a local area of maybe three days away…it took a great deal of stress out of our lives, having someone manage our properties for us.”

Even making the decision to hire a management firm comes with its own set of pitfalls. Believe it or not, many of these firms still implement manual systems and don’t even have a website. As a result, customer service suffers, contributing to the declining public perception of property managers themselves. At Real Property Management offices, professionally trained staff work hard to overcome the black mark left from the rash of ‘part-time’ property managers, or unsophisticated firms.

“In this day and age, if you’re a property manager and you don’t embrace technology, you’re going to be in big trouble,” says Emery Phillips, owner of a Real Property Management franchise office.

In addition to routine maintenance, Real Property Management offices also take over the drafting of a lease, tenant vetting, and the unpleasantness that comes in the unfortunate case of an eviction.

“In the first year, our income increased with Real Property Management,” adds says Jeanette Borg, a Real Property Management client. “I think it was the way they handled the business for us, too.

With home ownership still on the decline, over a third of the nation’s households are currently renting. Real Property Management is primed to continue to grow in addition to the over 280 locations across the U.S., working in conjunction with hundreds of driven entrepreneurs.

“So what really excites me about the industry today is that there are more renters than ever, and with the Real Property Management platform we’re able to bring those best practices to bear,” adds Marcus Phillips, a Real Property Management franchise owner. “Real Property Management is really leading the charge for other property management firms.”

“Real Property Management seeks to really raise the industry standards across the board,” says Real Property Management Corporate CEO, Lukas Krause. “And so what we do is have a thorough onboarding process that consists of a six week online university. They come to our offices in Salt Lake for four days of training, then we provide them with sixty days of post-support training. From an ongoing perspective, we have regular training sessions, conferences, regular meet ups and best practices forums to ensure that everyone’s got the best practices for the business.

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Video: Real Property Management – Leave the Hard Work Up to Us