15% Property Management Fees Reasonable?

[Mitchell Hammack]

I've always heard that you can expect to be anywhere from 8%-12% of rent for professional property management. I'm finding PMs who charge that as the base fee... but what I didn't expect is to see a high cost for finding new tenants (often 75% or 100%) and for renewing leases, (25%). Perhaps that's just the Tampa area but can anyone tell me if that's expected?

On a LTR property you expect to see $2000 a month in rent:

10% base fee:                                                             $200 / month ( $2400 / yr )

100% one month rent for finding new tenants:   $2000

25% of one monthly rent lease renewal fee:        $500

Total rental income:                                                  $24,000 / yr

I'm not privy to how often a tenant renews vs you have to find a new one but at assuming its every other year: 

                                                                                      ( 0.5 * $500 + 0.5 * 2000  = $1250 /yr)

That works out to $3650 per year in PM costs for a property that's bringing in $24,000 a year (also assuming no vacancy) or 15%.

[Johanna Kok]

It may also depend on the type of property that you are having managed. We charge our multifamily clients 15% but we are able to do less than that for our single family rentals as they are a lot LESS work than any multifamily property.