How Property Managers find new Tenants? Showing empty units take so much time!

[Paul Sverdlin]

Reaching out to all Property Managers out there. 

I have a self-managed portfolio of SFRs in multiple locations. In each of them I hire a realtor whenever I need to find new tenants. They take calls, post ads, arrange showing times with existing tenants who are leaving (when they gave proper notice, but still reside in the unit), collect applications, answer a ton of questions, do paperwork, hand over the keys..... All-n-all doing lots of time consuming work for which I am happy to pay them 1/2 - 1 month of rent.

However a property management company would probably not spend so much money since it would cut into their revenue. Doing it on their own would imply having to do all of the above mentioned work all over the area they cover. For a city like Toronto where I reside, that would mean 1 hour drive just to get to the rental and another hour to get back. That's a lot of wasted effort. So how do property managers do it: do they drive around or do they hire realtors for each supported location or is there a better approach I did not mention?

Thanks in advance. Really curious about this one.