Property Management Start-ups to the Rescue of NRI Investors

Periodic inspection of properties, assured care and rental assistance make companies such as Rentprop4u a hit with those away from home

If there is one reliable thing NRIs have always vouched for and continue to invest in, it is property back home in India. Bengaluru, Kochi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Delhi have been investment hotspots. However, the lucrative investment comes with strings attached - how does one know their tenant is good, that their house is not damaged in their absence, or what if the tenant calls them from across the seas to get a plumbing problem fixed?

Being so far off, and rarely visiting their hometowns, NRIs now are turning to property management companies to take care of the nitty-gritty of their treasured properties.

Rentprop4u, a Bengaluru-based realty start-up, says it has seen an almost 60 per cent increase in the number of enquiries over the past one year from NRIs in Australia, US, Canada, New Zealand and the Gulf. The company helps NRIs realise the full potential of their real estate investments. 

"Usually, NRI homeowners are worried about things like finding the right tenant quickly, showing the property, tenant vacation hassles and legal implications, rent variation, lack of tenant screening and house maintenance, dependency on brokers and inability to inspect the property during tenant stay," says Nagaraju M, CEO, Rentprop4u.

Nagaraju lays out the current details, very specific to NRIs - nearly 25 per cent of apartments in Bengaluru are bought by NRIs. In Kochi, it is about 40 per cent. Investment by NRIs in other cities such as MMR, NCR, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Dehradun varies between 5 to 10 per cent of the overall market sales.

According to the 2011 census of India, out of the 90 million residential census units, 11 million units were vacant; that is about 12 per cent of the total urban housing stock. And a lot of homeowners prefer to let their investments lie idle rather than face the trouble of letting them out.

Nagaraju speaks of how companies like his have now become popular with NRIs, because they offer 100 per cent property assistance - including rent assistance, rental agreements and payments, maintenance, quarterly inspection of properties with photographs taken and sent to owners. They also offer niche on-demand services such as furnishing and payment of property taxes.

Rentprop4u takes care of one other worry for NRIs - safety - through tenant screening and background verification as well. They do a police verification of the tenant through their legal team.

Established in 2016, Rentprop4u currently has 200-plus registered properties and more than 400 users. Be it a single property or a large portfolio, the company is so confident of its tenant placement services that it guarantees to let out the property in less than 30 days or start paying the rent to the owner within a month.

"We give them 15-20 per cent higher returns compared to brokers, so NRIs find our deals attractive. We can assure uninterrupted rent payments to property owners even when some of the properties are vacant for short periods," he adds.