Multiple rental property owners question

[Chance Cooper]

If you own more than one rental property could you elaborate on how much time you actually manage your properties outside of your primary job? My ultimate goal is to one day acquire 10 rental homes, currently I own one rental and I live in my primary owned residence. I am very curious as to how busy I would be owning multiple houses. The one rental that I have now I have no issues and never hear or have any problems from my tenants. When I do my walk throughs every 90 days everything is great.

It can't be this easy owning multiple homes. Please tell me your experiences if you own multiple homes. 

[Adam Kent]

Chance, as you scale your business things will be getting tougher to manage. The fact is you might not have enough time to manage all 10 once you get there.  I am a buy and hold investor and the best thing I have done to help manage my properties is my tenant screening process.  Make sure you have a good screening process in place.  One thing I started doing is going to your potential tenants current residence. It can give you some insight on how they currently live.

[Jesse Waters]

Chance,

I don't do my own property management, my current work schedule is a bit too hectic to allow me to take that on.  I have 10 units and working on getting another 12.  I honestly put about 2-3 hours a week into dealing with my rentals, at most.  I have gone 2-3 months with out having to field a call from one of my property managers, or deal with any general hassle.  I have also had months where I can't seem to get off the phone with property managers, contractors, inspecting work etc.  

It comes down to if you are going to manage the properties directly, or manage your managers & dealing with contractors as you will have to from time to time.

I am curious to hear from others who directly manage their own rentals.

JW

[Paul Choate]

To answer your question, I have 13 sfrs and manage 4 owned with a partner. Mine are C and C- properties so they require more maintenance and tenant hustling. I spend about 20 hours a week on them but am bringing on an assistant to take on much of that work. I work for myself and am trying to move into this full time. It feels like two full time jobs sometimes...

Basically, if you have nicer properties and follow @Adam Kent advice on tenant screening you can have less trouble than I have. I have traded my time for higher returns. I have learned the hard way the importance of tenant screening.

[Account Closed]

I own over 20 nationwide (TX, OK, NC, SC, FL) that I self manage and I spend very little time on them.  The time you spend will be directly related to your investment strategy, the quality of the properties, and quality of tenants you are able to attract with them.

I developed my strategy while holding a full time job, so developing a strategy in which I could minimize my time spent on property management, and optimize cash flow was key!

[Bill S.]

@Chance Cooper I have a full time job and 10 properties with 22 units. The real time sink is turnovers. It takes me about 20 hours of my time to turn a place (from notice of moving by existing tenant to keys to new tenant) and I hire all cleaning and most fixing out. You can manage more if you out source more. You lose control the more you farm out so it's a trade off.

Fixing things is usually little more than a phone call or two. Having more is actually easier as you build systems to deal with issues and contractor's know you have more units which means more work so they are more likely to take care of you.

[John Thedford]

Originally posted by @Adam Kent:

Chance, as you scale your business things will be getting tougher to manage. The fact is you might not have enough time to manage all 10 once you get there.  I am a buy and hold investor and the best thing I have done to help manage my properties is my tenant screening process.  Make sure you have a good screening process in place.  One thing I started doing is going to your potential tenants current residence. It can give you some insight on how they currently live.

I just put someone in a house and they are FILTHY. I have pretty much decided to boot them at the end of the lease. I like your idea of going to their current residence to get an idea how they live. I did look inside his truck when he came to look and it appeared clean. Unfortunately, that didn't give me a clue how they keep the house.

[Chance Cooper]

Thanks for all the replies guys, it paints a very good picture for me.

[J. Martin]

@Chance Cooper ,

I don't spend much time on the ongoing property management, as long as you're not doing work yourself. I have my handyman live in one of the 12 units I manage/own/co-own. He takes maintenance calls and does repairs. I lease up units. Have clearly defined qualifications, ads pre-written with pictures, and preferably video (post on youtube). Specify how you want to be contacted and with what information (income, deposit ready, move-in date, etc).

A lot of it will depend on what geographic location you are, neighborhood "class" (ghetto/ super nice) > which will define your tenant profile, then how well you do screening.

All of these are more important to me than whether or not you plan on having 5, or 10 houses..

[Bryan N.]

@Chance Cooper 

Based on your picture we are in the same line of work.  Factor property management into your analysis when purchasing and you will be fine.  This way you can keep pushing forward with your goals and if you PCS or get overwhelmed, hand over all or part of the portfolio to a property manager.  You will still cash flow, because you factored the expense when you purchased.