Columbus, OH - Costs of Managing Property

[Kristina Anderson]

This is our first post!  

My husband and I are in the process of researching the Columbus, OH real estate market, with hopes of purchasing an investment property by the end of 2019. We are based on the East Coast. We need help navigating the nuances of a new market, particularly the costs associated with managing property. Specifically: 

1) what should we expect to pay for a property manager? How does this scale up for larger properties (vs. duplexes)? 

2) what utilities / services are we required to pay as landlords that we may not be thinking of? (i.e., is garbage collection a separate cost or embedded into RE Taxes? Is there a separate sewer cost?). 

3) in smaller buildings, can we expect tenants to do maintenance like shoveling snow in the driveway or mowing the lawn or is that something landlords do?

We don't have a specific property in mind, yet and are open to both duplexes as well as larger residential apartment buildings. If the cap rate works. Any help outlining the "extra" expenses we'll be looking at would be helpful.  (Note: we currently own and live in a 3 family and already understand about surprise costs. We just don't know how the Columbus area works in terms of what our P&L will look like in terms of the L side.)

Thanks to all!

Tina