Why do many landlords not hire management?

[John Liaaz]

I notice that it's a mixed bag when it comes to management on here. Half prefer to manage all their properties themselves and the other half won't touch a property without a manager/management company. Why is this such a polarizing topic in real estate investing?

Coming from a small business world, I couldn't imagine owning my business and doing all the work AND being on call 24/7 for customers. I never had any issues hiring employees and managers. So when I started real estate, that's the first thing I did upon acquiring a new property, started looking for management companies. I was surprised when I came to online forums to find that so many people DESPISE property managers and do everything themselves. 

I have manager for my small business, I'm paying him $40k+ a year! I pay that because it makes my life easier, I don't want to deal with a bunch of min wage employees and customers asking for me. Same thing for tenants.

It seems to me that many real estate investors are opposed to management it unlike your average small business owner.

What would be the reason for that?

[Sharlene Mulchandani]

@John Liaaz For most part, I feel like if you own just a single unit or even a handful, the challenges of marketing and managing your rentals are fairly doable. But as your portfolio grows, managing your units can then get quite time consuming and can start to feel like a headache. For smaller landlords that live close to their rentals, I think adopting some sort of property management software is the easiest way manage, instead of hiring a property manager. You can automate your invoices, collect payments online, sign leases and store them too, screen your tenants, track maintenance, the list of benefits is truly quite long. Some might disagree with me and say that hiring a PM, is definitely the easiest way to go, but I know of many smaller landlords that make effective use of these softwares and hire a maintenance guy to look after any work orders.