How far away are property managers willing to work?

[Kyle Hern]

If a property management company was based in a certain location, how far are they willing to work? If I have a property 15 miles away from their location, are property managers likely to decline working with me? I'm likely to invest long-distance, so they'll be doing everything? Also, at what point should I decline?

[James Wise]

Originally posted by @Kyle Hern:

If a property management company was based in a certain location, how far are they willing to work? If I have a property 15 miles away from their location, are property managers likely to decline working with me? I'm likely to invest long-distance, so they'll be doing everything? Also, at what point should I decline?

 I own a rather large Property Management company ($50 million+ portfolio) so I've got a unique perspective on this.

We keep our management portfolio to the county we are located in. We hit the whole county but don't go outside of it. We've considered expanding out to a couple neighboring counties as there are a few markets we'd do very well in however we haven't pulled the trigger yet as the distance would be a major issue. If we do decide to do it we will need to add a surcharge to all of those who own properties outside of our county.

How exactly the surcharge would work we haven't decided yet. It's tough because we'd need it to remain profitable but it'd probably price us out of the market as the margins in Property Management are rather thin. The real money is actually made in the additional sales that the Property Management business will bring into your Brokerage.