Property manager questions to ask central South Carolina

[Daniel Sperry]

Hello!  I am doing due diligence on a multi family apartment building just north of Columbia, SC.  The current owners are local and have used a manager to lease the units but seem to be pretty hands on in other parts of the management and building upkeep.  So I'm planning to interview the current property manager as well as a few others to see if they would be a good fit for me as an absentee owner.  

I'd like to get advice from the community on the best way to evaluate managers and what a realistic expectation could be for how much they will do.  I would like to be as hands off as possible.  Thanks!

[Andrew Schutsky]

A few other questions to ask:

-How many units are they currently managing? keep an eye on some companies that are managing thousands of units and may not be able to provide viable oversight to all properties equally

-Are they also owners/investors? Watching out for competing interests as they may fill their own buildings before yours

-If you're planning on doing renovations/value add, will they provide oversight to the projects? Do they have experience in successfully improving NOI?

-What is their process for approving contractors/expenses?