Looking a good PM in Indianapolis who does not charge 1st month

[Richard Bull]

Hi BP community!

I have an excellent relationship and experience with my PM in the Mississippi market and they do fill the properties very quickly and with great tenants. My PM does not charge first month's rent as a fee when turning over the property, advertising and placing a new good tenants. They also do not charge any additional fees other than the 10% fee. 

I am having trouble finding an PM in Indy that operates the same way, although I have only interviewed a handful of PM's so far. Is this 1st month rent fee standard for the Indy market, are there other options? 

Can you recommend a very good PM who does not charge such a fee when placing a new tenant. I am willing to pay a fee, but the first month's rent, really hurts my cash flow. 

Thank you!

[Lee Smith]

@Richard Bull

  I am one of those property managers that charges 1st months' rent.. We used to do a different model and barely charged anything on the front end. I lost a lot of money on that. Let me show you a few of the expenses that go into placement.

Advertising - We put your listing on all the major websites. We update the listing 2-3 times a week on Facebook, and 2 times a week on craigslist.

I have my people answering the phones for prospective tenants from 9am to 10pm 7 days a week. This means more people get their questions answered and we schedule more showings than the average PM.

We shoot high quality photos and high quality videos.

We follow up with perspective tenants 2-3 times to get them to apply for your rental or give us good feedback.

We pay a coordinating broker fee.

We give you weekly status reports of what is happening with your property. This shows how many calls we received, how many showings we had, feedback, etc.

We complete pre-rent reports. I send my guys out to make sure your property is ready to rent. Happy tenants mean they stay longer.

We work very hard to get you GOOD solid tenants. Background, credit, and eviction checks. We know how to figure out if their previous property manager/landlord is their cousin Ricky-Bobby. 

Our lease is 24 pages long. We work very hard to make the tenants as responsible as possible. 

We save you a ton of money on turns and rehabs. I have the contractors and plans in place to make sure you are saving a lot of money.

I am not only a property manager, I am also an investor as well. I created all these systems for my own properties, and you are benefiting from my ongoing knowledge and updates. I am not stagnant or declining in my investing either. You get the benefits of my learning and on-going investing.

You can see this is a lot of stuff for me to pay for, especially on a property that only rents for $500~ a month. 

There's a reason my tenants stay on average 4+ years in a single family home. That's even in the low income stuff. There's a reason I have a 1% eviction rate on the tenants I place. There's a reason 98% of our tenants are paying their rent on time.

Every week, I get 1-3 calls from people who have been taken advantage of by property managers. They pay too much for the property, they pay too much in rehab, and they get poop tenants.. Then the tenants trash the house, and the vicious cycle starts all over again.

I am not trying to sell you, I am just showing what goes into a good property manager.

I am glad your guy in Mississippi is awesome to you! Keep him happy! You are VERY lucky to have him...