How to Supervise my Property Manager?

[Michael D Kaminski]

Greetings!  (First post on a BP Forum!)

I have a portfolio of properties (more than 20 units) that are being handled by a single property manager. I get the owner's statement every month (from Buildium) that shows rents, vacancies, property management fees, maintenance expenses, etc. We are also in a period of stabilizing the properties so we also have significant CapEx, most of the construction being handling by the property manager's in-house crew.

I am getting the feeling that my property manager is taking advantage of me by charging too much for maintenance fees and CapEx. Only for example, should replacing a toilet cost cost $400 instead of $200? Is there a way to analyze the owner's statement so that I can challenge the property manager, aside from gaining all the experience with "reasonable" costs myself so that I could analyze on my own? I guess my question is whether there are services that would do this type of analysis? (On a non-BP podcast, I hear the speaker suggest using a VA to do this same analysis.) I still have a day job so chasing down different quotes is difficult, but maybe I need to find someone to do that? Is that the only way?

Any advice would be appreciated.  Thanks.