How many units does it take to support a PM?

[Mike D.]

How many apartment units will it take to support a full time property manager? SOmebody who can collect rents, turn units over and coordinate repairs. I've heard anywhere from 50 to 100 for one person.

[Bill S.]

A few assumptions, a "regular" hired gun PM runs 10% of monthly rent plus 1 months rent at turnover for securing a new tenant. Good ones make 6 figures. If you are hiring an employee then the number would be different than if you hire an independent contractor.

Here (Denver Metro) for example the average rent is about $1,000 per month. Manager fee would be about 10% or $100 per month per unit. You would also have turnovers which run one months rent and assume an average tenancy of 3 years (probably long) then you would have $333 per year ($1,000 every 3 years) on average per unit in turnover costs for PM. This translates to roughly $1,500 per year per unit. Paying someone $20 per hour would result in about $35 per hour of expenses due to taxes and benefits. The cost to you would be about $70,000 per year (assuming 2,000 work hours in a year). The breakeven point would be about 47 units ($70K/$1.5K). I was told by someone in the PM business it's fairly easy to handle 50 units with one person. It's also fairly difficult to do a good job with one person when you have more than 100 units.

Now obviously if you change the numbers you change the outcome.