All Forum Posts by: Trevor Haasch

Working to start a new Property Management Company. Our goal is to align our fees to be in the best interest of the owners. We are also property owners ourselves. Although leasing fees are common in our industry, I'm not a big fan of them as they give incentive to the property manager to re-lease the property annually and from a budget standpoint one months rent is a big gulp to swallow at once especially if the owners have a mortgage on the property. I would like to structure our fees to be competitive yet easier on the property owners as well. My only concern is if an owner sees a higher priced fee per month compared to our competitors they might not be comparing apples to apples. 

Option 1

Flat Fee (ALL INCLUSIVE INCLUDING LEASING FEES) Only paid if rent is received

• Single Family, Town-Home, Condo, and Lofts: $125.00/month Flat Fee
• Duplex: $115.00/month, per unit
• Tri-Plex: $110.00/month, per unit
• QUAD: $105.00/month, per unit
• 5-10 Units: As low as $95.00/month, per unit
• 11-30 Units: As low as $85.00/month, per unit
• 31+ Units: As low as $75.00/month, per unit

Option 2

12%-15% of Monthly Collected Rent (ALL INCLUSIVE INCLUDING LEASING FEES) Only paid if rent is received

Option 3 

Traditional setup

8% of Monthly Collected Rent

1 Month Leasing Fee - Paid when new tenant moves in

1/2 Month Renewal Fee - Paid if lease is renewed

If you were to hire a property manager, which fee structure would you like better?

Does anyone else have any other suggestions that might better align our fee structure to the owners interest and yet remain profitable.

We recently replaced 58 windows in our apartment complex. We had vinyl double hung and replaced them with vinyl single hung. We decided on single hung because there were cheaper, not as many parts to fail, and the screens were only on the bottom so cheaper to fix. They were much better than the widows that were there and the tenants are happy with them. If you order in quantities, they are much cheaper. I think we paid about $150 per window which is a $50 savings fro ordering just one. Ask your sales rep at the store if they can get them cheaper for buying that many. We have a contractor sales rep we work with. We did the work ourselves. The bids we received from contractors were $500-$1000 per window which included the window and installation. We found we could do an apartment with 6 windows in about a day. Total we spent a about $8700 for 58 windows.

Hello from Minnesota! I just passed my real estate exams and I am in talks with a local broker that currently only does buy/sell. I currently manage an apartment complex that I am a partner in and have a couple of my own investment properties. I would like to expand on my experience and offer management services to others. The broker is open to this arrangement, but would like to know more about how this would work. I spoke with the Minnesota Department of Commerce and I would have to run my property management through his brokerage, but that is as much information as this would give me and advised me to read the state statue. I know there are several other realtors that do this in Minnesota. 

My questions are 1. What would my brokers involvement be? 2. What funds, if any need to be deposited into the brokers trust account (rent, security deposits, ect)? 3. What is the best way to structure this arrangement? 4. Must all the documents such as leases, applications and such remain at the brokers main office? 

If you know the answers or know of someone that has such arrangement can you please point me in the right direction. 

Thank You!