Paying a property manager for a moveout.

[Doug Nordman]

I’ve been a BP member for over a year, and I finally have some questions.

We’ve managed our only rental property for over 20 years. It’s a single-family home in the Waipio Gentry neighborhood on Oahu, and we live just a few miles away. More details are in my profile but my questions are on a separate subject.

In September, while we were off-island for a couple months, our tenants gave notice. We hired a property manager (referral from a friend) to handle the moveout, and that went all right. The ex-tenants are happy too.

Now we’re back home and working through the punch list before marketing the home to the next tenants. That should go fine.

We considered hiring the property manager to bring on new tenants and take care of the place full-time, but we’re not sure that they’re the right company to work with. We might continue a search for a manager, but in the meantime we want to pay this one for their time & skills.

We know that they’ve incurred $350 in expenses for cleaning & minor repairs. They haven’t mentioned a total moveout fee yet, perhaps because (at the time) they wanted to build reciprocity for signing an annual contract.

How do we put a price on the manager’s total fee for the moveout? Is there an hourly rate for a manager’s time, is it typically a percentage of the rent, is it a local-custom flat fee, or is there some other factor?

We’d be happy to pay the manager a finder’s fee for referring new tenants to us. We’d handle the application and the screening and the lease and moving them in. Once we’ve deposited the tenant’s security and first month’s rent, what’s a typical price for the manager’s finder’s fee? Is that also a percentage of the rent or a local custom?