Experience with hiring an employee for property management?

[Tom Sylvester]

We are looking to oursource some of the tasks in our business, mostly around property management and would like to hear experiences of others who have done this.

What we are looking to outsource includes the following:

• Taking tenant calls
• Showing the properties
• Signing lease paperwork

We invest in rural areas, so property management companies do not exist.

We are looking to hire someone directly for this.  This position will be ~5 hours/week.

A major hurdle that we have run into is workers comp.  Since we are in the real estate industry, insurance companies want $2,000+/year for workers comp.  

We are researching what options and alternatives we have.  

From all of our research, it seems like we will need a W2 employee instead of a 1099, which means needing workers comp.

Has anyone else done something similar to this?