What should I expect from my property manager?

[Mike Redick]

I closed on my first pure rental property, a two-family home, back in June and unexpectedly had both tenants move out by the end of July. So with some remodeling to do and needing new tenants I decided to hire a property manager sooner than later.

I interviewed a few companies and settled on one, and while I can't find a lot of reviews online at least this one didn't have any negative reviews unlike the others I talked to.

So I had him do the remodeling, which was basically just repainting and replacing the carpets with vinyl flooring along with a couple minor repairs, which took two months total for both apartments. I was a little frustrated with that, but having never done a remodel before I don't know how long that kind of work would normally take.

The work was finished on both units in mid-September and he let me know he was going to start showing them. A couple weeks later I googled to see the listings and couldn't find any, when I asked him about it he said he had shown it to someone and was waiting for the application. A week later the potential tenant backed out and my PM finally created listings on the various apartment search sites. 

Now we're heading into November and I still have no tenants... and my misgivings about the process have kept growing all this time. I had my handyman there to do some more work in the last couple weeks and he was there while the PM was showing the place. According to my handyman he was doing a good job trying to sell the apartment so that gives me some hope.

The bottom line though is that I really have no idea what to expect with the process. Is this par for the course? I'm thinking I should have handled the "remodel" as maybe property managers don't usually do that part and that's why it took so long?