Property Manager charging extra fees

[Brad Coyne]

Question about property management fees. I pay 9% of the gross rents collected to my property manager. They are now charging me $30 per house to go through and do an "inspection" on the property. The $30 is the fee to do the inspection and then if they need to do any work, such as replace a furnace air filter, then that is extra. I feel that doing these walks through inspections should just be part of managing the property and should be part of the 9% fee that I pay out of my rents. Please give me your feedback and your opinions! Thank you!

[Matt K.]

While advertising is free, time is not. It still takes TIME to advertise and do showings etc. With a PM you are paying for them to basically be the buffer between you/tenant. That buffer might mean 100 phone calls or 0, but that's baked into the fee you pay per mo. 

Now, it'd state in your contract what the rates are for the fees (rather it should state it). Going to inspect the property and change filters is outside their "normal" (for lack of better word) scope of work. They're charging you the time it takes to do this. 

Same as if you had a handy man fix the toilet or light etc, they'd charge you for that. They might even charge you fee for doing it. They won't charge you extra though for taking the phone call...