May be not.It's an overkill to have property manager for just two rental properties.

This option would be "clean", but would require a lot of extra leg work (like various tax filings and accounting) that seem overkill for one employee.Option #2: Have the new employee be employed by all three companies and receive three paychecks.

It sounds like overkill, but even if they tell you to leave them alone, that's a response.

In regards to the letting me know when they are headed out of town, 3 days may be over kill, but if a tenant is gone for an extended period I like to turn the water off and drive by a few times to check in and make sure everything is ok.

I would agree that an LLC is overkill imho for the following reasons:-if you are a single managing member, there is real concern with your LLC being seen as an "alter ego" (since you have complete control over the company's actions).

Craig,There are some specific reasons why one would use two sets of entities to hold assets, but it's overkill for most small-time investors without several million in assets or multiple investors involved in simultaneous deals.

However; asking for item numbers, skus, etc. is in my opinion overkill, unless you're in an area where subs are desperate.

W/ that said if the work your talking about is lipstick then hiring a licensed GC may be over kill.   

Considering that it costs a minimum of $40 a month however, it seems like it might be a bit of overkill for a person looking to manage only a couple of properties.Has anyone found this to be the case, or is Buildium still the best option even if you only have a few tenants?

I think Buildium and Google.Sites are overkill for what you need unless you wanted the extra features each package offers.If you only need to file maint requests and organize important files per property then maybe a simple Google drive will do plus maybe custom rule in google mail to automatically organize your important property related emails.