Thinking about ditching property manager - need advice

[Adam Craig]

I am looking to ditch my property manager in the near future. Looking to find something halfway between me 100% managing and a property manager.... 

My portfolios consists of 26 single family - most are fully rehabbed using the BRRR strategy so they rent quick. Right now they are managed by Howard Hanna Property management who I have been with from the start - 5 years + years. I never wanted to deal directly with showings/accounting/collections/evictions/legal so a PM was a good fit.

My business has changed over the years - its grown and expanded into flipping so I have multiple full time crews working daily. For that reason I dont have the PM handle any maintenance issues because my guys do much it cheaper. I also have my photographer take photos and I send the PM photos and a description for each new listing because they dont do a good job with either.

I have negotiated 8% of rents - They take 1st month rent on a new lease - no renewal fees. I now understand that my PM who will never care about my properties and tenants like I did. All in all she is pretty solid but I have a few gripes. I dont think they are worth the 36K I paid them last year.

At the very least I am considering marketing the properties on my own to save on the leasing fee. But eventually I think I can phase them out all together and find someone like my PM to manage them at a fraction of the cost.

I have 2 businesses so I am too busy to manage the whole thing. I would like to continue with repair requests and listings. What I dont want to do is showings/accounting/collections/evictions/legal.

Any ideas on a good route to take? And is there a go to PM software for something like this?

[Stone Jin]

Since you are in the area having a PM may not be critical to your success.  I have a full time job and still manage all my local properties (my portfolio is slightly larger than yours), my wife does the back end books and I deal with showings.  The maintenance is just my tenants texting me and me texting a handyman, plumber, garage guy, roofer etc etc.  Similar to your mindset, I have a hard time justifying to the 30-40k commission I would have to give up for that service.

With that said, everything that we have out of my local area, I use PM for.  It is what it is for those properties and I run my numbers with PM included and they work fine.  

You can try it, worst case you go back to the agency.  However my experience is that it doesn't really take much time and allows me to have greater control over my properties.