hiring an employee

[Don Chambers]

I have 19 single family rentals.  Three with a partner and 16 myself.  I want to hire someone to help with the 16 I have alone.

I have been managing them for 6 years and I'm tired of it.  I want to add more but I have not bought a new one in over a year because of the hassle.  I am busy with other things.

I usually break even each year but if I didn't have loans I would make about $85k.  In a few years they will start being paid off.  I will except some negative cash flow to have help.

I have someone that does bookkeeping, gets rent from po box, deposits rent, and sends late letters.  That helps a lot but not enough.

I have two vacant. I put up signs but have not put up arrow signs or done any other marketing.  I have had a few calls but been too busy to call them back.  I'm too busy.  I want to be hands off.  Then I can scale by adding for houses.

When there are vacancies it only takes about 5 hours a month (that's probably high).  I can't see paying a mangement company $200/hour for this.  There charge a fee when they rent them so the monthly percentage just goes to these few hours if fielding calls.

My main problem is having time to market and show them.  But that is only needed when I have vacancies.

Does anyone have advice?