Hey BP! Hoping that I am posting in the correct forum.

My grandmother has moved into an assisted care facility, giving power of attorney/attorney in fact to my parents. Her house is completely paid off and my parents are wanting to rent it out to help cover the cost of her assisted living facility charges. My parents do not have experience with renting out property to tenants so I offered to help walk them through the process. They have been super busy and I have been doing most of the legwork thus far. Am I able to just step in as the property manager for them? It is my understanding, in Arizona you do not need to have a RE license if you are only managing one property and are not receiving compensation from managing that property. I am doing this completely for free, just to help them out and make sure they get a good tenant and everything works out smoothly and my grandmother's expenses are covered. 

I know that in order to run background checks on rentprep, you have to provide documentation for either owning the property, power of attorney or a property management agreement. I just want to make sure I am not doing anything illegal if we create a contract between us, stating that I am the property manager and we can even spell out that I will not be receiving compensation for management.

Any input would be appreciated and if someone has a property management agreement they would be willing to share with me would be awesome.

Thanks!!

Jake,

I work for RentPrep and hopefully I can help clarify.

As far as documentation proving ownership of the rental, that is only necessary if you plan to add a credit check onto your Basic, Pro, or Platinum report.

If you want to know the credit score but don’t want to deal with verifying ownership I’d recommend either not adding a credit check or using our SmartMove product.

SmartMove is tenant driven in that you’d create an account with us and then provide the tenant’s email and the tenant applicant would take it from there including paying for the report.

As far as being a “property manager” you’re right about looking into your state laws because it varies from state to state with regulations as far as managing other people’s property. One suggestion is to try a service like avvo where you can buy a 15 minute consultation with a local attorney to address some of these types of questions. Doing it this way would be more cost efficient and you can have peace of mind that you’re setup the right way.

Hope that helps.

@Jake Kain The exemption is very clear in Arizona when a person is managing their own properties, however managing a property for others generally requires a license. The penalty for crossing the line can be a felony and as such, I would suggest you contact an AZ attorney that deals with real estate law to be clear that what you desire is actually legal.

The Department of Real Estate has frequently directed unlicensed property management to the Attorney General for cease and desist action as well as other actions, none of which you want to be a part of.

You can do all of the property work at Grandmas house, prepare it carefully so that she can achieve maximum rent etc. with no issue.

We offer lease up as well as management and sometimes that is a more affordable path that gets everyone started on the proper path with all correct forms, leases etc.