Rental property management

[Tyrone Marson]

I have made an offer on a property in the Belair-Edison area of Baltimore, which I will rent once closed. A couple things I need the communities help with. I am planning to use a listing agent to market the property to rent and vet tenants, once tenants are in place I would pass on to a property management to collect rent, handle evictions as needed, maintain books, take maintenance calls and schedule routine maintenance. However, for the maintenance calls and routine maintenance I would have the PM call me and I will have these calls taken care by my contractors/handyman. Will property management facilitate I handling the maintenance of the property and they just take the calls and make routine maintenance schedule?

[Randall Alan]

My 2 cents would be that you don't need a property manager or a listing agent.  My wife and I manage 40 properties with very little daily effort.  To the point that we both worked full time corporate jobs and managed to keep those jobs until we had 20+ properties we were dealing with.  You can do A LOT of managing by text while working a regular job. You are an hour from your upcoming rental.  Zillow is literally all you need to being able to find a renter.  We use Rentec Direct to collect our rent, market our properties (through Zillow), have tenants contact us if repairs are needed, and background screen our tenants - plus track all our expenses, etc.  It costs about $4 a month per property once you have several on board.  Might be a little higher than that for just your first one. 

Why would you pay a PM 8%-10% to then handle the calls yourself?  You are already going to be doing most of the heavy lifting.  You just need a system (like Rentec Direct) or others to help you be efficient.  Being only an hour away from your property, you would really only have to be traveling there when it turns over to show it to a new tenant.  My vote is to keep your money, do it yourself.

Randy