Managing My First Rental

[Shayne Garcia]

Hello! I’m new to the BiggerPockets community and my wife and I recently started the process of closing out our first deal! I am excited and also terrified all at once but thankfully for the tools and information I have gained here I believe its a winner!

My question is regarding managing the property. The property has a 3 bedroom home, as well as a one bedroom apartment above a detached garage. Both are currently already tenant occupied (leased through November), and the home will cash flow from day one because of it. I am trying to decide if I should self manage to save the $180 a month maybe doing something like Rentredi. But the property is two hours away from where I live and in a city where I don’t already have a network of contractor set up so I would have to work to do that. Additionally well I believe I could learn and successfully manage, I have no experience managing rentals so far. I also don’t have much information on the current tenants other than that they have generally paid on time and are current.

What would you do?

[Charles Carillo]

@Shayne Garcia

Congrats on closing on your first deal!

Driving 4 hours round trip to save $180 per month does not seem worth it to me. Secondly, as you stated, you do not have a team on the ground there. This is something a property manager will have access to along with accounting software for managing the tenants. Maybe after you buy a few more rentals in this area, you can start self-managing.