At what number of houses does management become more difficult?

[Gary Dezoysa]

At the local real estate meeting, one of the experienced investors, who has since reduced his portfolio, commented that he's comfortable at 50 houses these days. Apparently he downsized from 100 a few years prior.

I know this will change by area and tenant quality, and someone with a real bad tenant early on might have problems with a single house. But hopefully you guys could give me some insight on when the sheer amount of houses starts to require better discipline, systems, etc than what you'd been doing in the past.

[Mike Sumsky]

For me, systems made all the difference.  I'm currently self-managing 33 units (21 different buildings).  My 'systems' starting out were very bad. I relied on excel spreadsheets to keep track of rent paid, then also had to enter income and expenses separately into quickbooks.  Late fees were very rarely enforced and therefore several of my tenants pushed the limits.  Of course I've learned a lot over the years about being a better property manager, but one of the things that helped the most was software.  About a year ago I started using Buildium to manage my properties.  It's been a night and day difference since.  I feel like I can handle twice as much now.