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Posted almost 9 years ago

Hired a Property Manager

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Bruce and I met with a property manager and signed up one of our properties with them this week. Hopefully our experience will go better than Brandon Turner's!

I had done some homework to research and rank our local property management options. My first choice was someone I wasn’t sure was operating in our investment neighborhood, because I don’t see them advertising on Craigslist. Turns out she has a waiting list, doesn’t do much advertising. Tenants in our area adore this property manager.

I had researched questions I wanted to ask and we set up a coffee date. We spent an hour talking about what her policies and procedures are and how it would work to transition this property to her. We’ve decided to try one property out and see how it goes while we still live in the area.

Her fee is 7%, which is competitive but a hard pill to swallow. But her average occupancy is 2 years compared to our 11 months, so there is some opportunity to reduce our turnover costs. She also has a portion of the deposit as nonrefundable and a nonrefundable $1000 pet FEE that even low income tenants are paying, so that could be more revenue too.

What I really like is how flexible she is with owner involvement. She can handle everything and charge us reasonable rates, or we can step in and take care of things if we want to handle turnover or maintenance, etc.

Here goes nothing, July 1st is go time!



Comments (2)

  1. Michele:

    Your new PM sounds like she could be a keeper.  We've yet to find one that competitively priced who appears thorough (with the references to back it up) ... actually, we've not found a suitable PM period.

    $1K is my kind of pet fee - it says we're really nor crazy about your pet (or confident in your ability to look after them) ... though it still probably would not be enough to convince me to accept pets again.


  2. Congrats!

    Yes, good morning! Pet fees are where it's at.

    But $1,000 seems steep!