Project Mgr vs General Contractor

[Joe Schaak]

I'm looking for opinions on using a General Contractor vs a Property Mgr managing a team of subs. I have a fairly large rehab with roof, windows, kitchen, bath, and opening walls. Looking forward to your great thoughts!

[J Scott]

When you say "property manager," do you really mean "project manager?"

Assuming so, in my experience, the value of a project manager comes when you have multiple rehabs going at once, and you want someone who can coordinate and watch over them all.  When you have a single rehab going, it's probably just as inexpensive (and efficient) to hire a General Contractor who can both do the rehab and manage it.  A typical GC will cost 10-20% of the total project costs (in my experience), whereas a separate project manager may cost more for a single project.  

Now, if you have multiple projects, the GC will cost 10-20% of *each* project, whereas a project manager's cost can typically be amortized over the multiple projects, bringing his total cost well below the 10-20% of each project (since he's doing the same amount of work, just across several projects).

The more projects you have going simultaneously, typically the better value you'll get from a project manager.  Not to mention that you'll continuity between projects (which you won't get if you're using different GCs on different projects), the project manager will likely be more aligned to your needs than the contractors needs (since he works for you, not the GC) and, if you do a revenue share with the project manager, you can be certain that he will have incentive to manage the schedule and budget very closely.

Btw, I spend a good part of a chapter discussing this topic in the BiggerPockets Flipping book...check that out for more info...