Property Management: can you reduce cost with scale?

[Chris Abkarians]

Hi all,

I came across an interesting line in David Greene's "Long-Distance Real Estate Investing" book. In it, he says that "Investors have leverage to negotiate better prices and services based on the size of their portfolio. The more properties you bring them, and the more total revenue they are managing, the more money they will make. This, in turn, makes them much more likely to make you the priority you always wanted to be. It can also mean you negotiate lower prices!"

I understand the downside of getting cheap on property management. But, curious if anyone has examples for how pricing changes as you scale from having a PM manage 10 units to 100 or 500 units. I imagine there's some improved economics for both sides.

Further, would it be possible to combine efforts in a given region and have 10 property owners with 20 units each bid out their PM contracts as a group?

Thanks!

Chris