How to Pick the Best Property Management Name for Your Business

This week, we want to talk to you about choosing a property management business name. In a lot of cases, of course, it’s up to what feels right to you. Let’s just take a couple of moments and go through some of the things that might help you make a decision and avoid some problems down the line.

Before Choosing a Property Management Company Name

We referenced the Small Business Association for what you want to consider when choosing a name. Here are some questions that you will need to ask yourself when choosing a property management company name.

1. How will it look?

This also goes for questions like, How’s it going to look on the logo? How’s it going to look on signs on the front of your building or the rental signs that are in front of your units, etc.?

You do not want to make your name too long, especially in states like Washington, where you must put your entire business name on all of your communications. If you have made your company name Joe’s Real Estate, Gourmet Hot Dogs, and Property Management, Incorporated, that’s a lot of stuff to put on there. Keep that in mind.

2. What connotations will it bring up in the viewer’s mind?

If your company name is “Bob’s Totally Cool Property Management” then it’s probably not going to give the professional attitude that you want to have.

3. Is it unique?

This is important on a number of levels. You want people to think of you, and only you, when somebody encounters your business’s name. There are also legal issues to consider; for instance, usually you cannot have a business name within your state that’s the same as another company (or even too similar to another entity in the same industry.) You’re going to want to do your research by going online to see if some other business is using it. Then, you can check with your state to see if that business name has been registered with them – which is likely, and very time-consuming. Here in California, the home of Silicon Valley, it has to be done by mail. You’re usually better off just choosing another name before going to that trouble.

4. Is it available as a URL?

We’ve done this as a blog before, where I talk about what you want to choose for your property management business’s URL. I have suggested before that you shouldn’t use your business name, but let’s say you want to anyway. That’s fine, but then you have to make sure it’s available. You would rather have it available as a “.com” than trying to work around something else.

What You Don’t Want to Do When Choosing a Property Management Name

Don’t use your name. If you have a common name – (or even not that common – I’m not the only John Bykowski in America, and two of the others were being indicted at one time) your company could be mistaken for another company in another location. Also, it is going to be more difficult if someone wants to take over your company. If it has a generic name, great, then they could take it over.

Don’t have it the same name as another company you own. For instance, if you have a real estate agency that is the Super Awesome Real Estate Agency, if you have Super Awesome Property Management, there’s a chance that the reviews of one will affect the other. Usually, it’s going to be bad reviews on your property management company (simply because of the way the property management business works) that is going to then possibly affect the real estate agency. We heartily suggest in having two separate names.

Even though it will help your SEO and name recognition, we don’t suggest in using a town name. If you choose the name of a small town and you want to move to other towns in that area, you will find it hard to get found. You will get some local property management SEO benefit out of calling yourself Roseville Property Management Company should you be in Roseville, CA. But if you want to expand to Sacramento somebody in Sacramento may think that you are not the appropriate company for them or maybe not big enough. Additionally, having the name of another town for your business will now work against you, SEO-wise. So, you ideally would want to avoid that.

Finally, take it from a person who works at a company called Four-and-half. Don’t make it hard to spell and understand. The amount of time that I have spent correcting people about the way our company’s name is spelled/pronounced/emailed is a lot of time that I will never get back. Don’t use homonyms – a word that sounds the same as something else. That is just going to cause you trouble later on down the line. Our name, Fourandhalf, does come with a fun origin story that we can use and get people to remember us by, but keep that in mind when you’re choosing your own company name.

We hope this has helped you out. If you have any other questions, feel free to give us a call, or reach out to us at Fourandhalf.com – Internet Marketing for Property Managers.

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How to Pick the Best Property Management Name for Your Company