As of last Monday, we don’t have any tenants in our rental house.
That makes me sad.
It makes me sadder that we were too nice and gave them an extra week free to get their stuff moved out.
Now we get the fun job of painting, replacing the linoleum, and probably cleaning the place up to get it ready for new renters that we haven’t found yet.
New renters.
Ick.
Now, we could put an ad on Craigslist and try to find renters ourselves.
Background checks.
Credit checks.
Interviews and walk-throughs.
Then, when we find someone, we’ll be collecting rent and dealing with any whiny issues that come up.
Yuck.
Or….
We can hire a property manager. The big name property management company in our area charges a $99 set-up fee plus $80 per month.
That covers:
- Rent collection
- Coordinating maintenance
- Accounting
- All of the other mundane details
If we add on the tenant-finding service, we’ll be paying them one-month’s rent, but they’ll handle the showings, advertising, background checks, and the lease. And their average tenant placement is 19 days. Another house in the neighborhood that used them had the house rented in about a week.
That moves our landlording firmly into the passive side-hustle category and all it costs us is (essentially) one and a half month’s rent with the added bonus that we’ll be asking the right amount for rent according to the market, instead of guessing. Our last tenants were probably paying $300 too little.
I think the property managers are the way to go, but I have absolutely no experience here.
Have any of you used a property manager? Was it good? Bad? Hell-on-Earth?
I don’t like property managers. They don’t pay close attention to your property because they have a bunch of clients. If things are going well, then it’s fine. If your tenants cause a lot of problem, then there will be a ton of charges.
I think if you have one or two properties, it’s easier to manage yourself. If you have more, then it’s worth getting a property manager. The price you list is really cheap. In our area, they usually charge around 8-10% of the rent plus whatever extras.
Just curious, if they rent the place to some deadbeats or people who trash the place, can you hold the management company accountable?
Did this work out?
The day the property manager found someone who would be a good fit, my best friend and his girlfriend decided they wanted the place. 🙁
So we refunded the application fee and my friend is moving out of our basement and into our spare house.