vacancy, maintenance and management rates for LA

[Michael Phillips]

Hello all, I am trying to build out some spreadsheets to model costs and am curious as to the groups thoughts around vacancy, maintenance and management rates. I have often heard these numbers expressed as a percentage of rent and or property value . Vacancy around 7% of rent, management around 10% for a SFR, maintenance at 1% of property value. My question is if this makes sense in a market such as Los Angeles. I own a duplex in Echo Park that has two 2 br/1 ba and rents are $3k. This seems to be significantly higher than other people on the forum in other states using the same percentages for these costs. It would seem that given the high rental demand for LA vacancy would be lower, given the extreme home cost, the maintenance would be lower as those costs are not as inflated as the home prices are, and similar for management costs on higher priced units. Should these numbers be lower in my calculations or is do all of these costs still scale?

[Aaron K.]

Vacancy is much lower than that and ongoing fees in LA can be around 5% with varying fees for tenant placement usually around $500-$700. The maintenance may even be a bit low but it depends on the condition of the units.