I can do the parade of horribles for a personally owned rental property but suffice it to say that it is a long and robust parade and the horribles are horrible.

@Brandon MorganI self manage my 29 SFR and run into this all the time.

It’s impressive that you managed to keep your monthly expenses relatively low while securing a strong rent of $4,500.Your background as a Realtor and the benefits you leveraged as a veteran clearly gave you an edge.

At the time QB was not the best for property management.

I use Avail software and it will list your property on 10+ websites. 

Why do I have to pay him to find properties for him; Let him find his own properties!!

I'm looking for properties to rent out bedrooms and I understand the benefits of just including utilities in the rent, baking it in.

Quote from @Salvatore Ross: When it comes to finding the perfect property to manage/co-host, what’s on your must-have list? 

With a bit of planning and good operations, one can easily manage 20 to 30 properties without an assistant, with less than a day or two a month.There's lots of automated ways to check on rent, make deposits (my tenants deposit directly into a bank account), receive maintenance requests, have maintenance done, etc., etc.One thing I could argue is to have your tenants ONLY email you, especially for maintenance requests, and that email goes directly to the vendor that you have set up to handle it.

_______________________________________________________________________________Recommend exploring as many sources as possible to get referrals AND cross-reference them to get as much accurate information as possible.Check out NARPM.com, BP’s Property Manager Finder (BiggerPockets: The Real Estate Investing Social Network), etc.Also, encourage you to learn from the mistakes of others - by reading posts here on BiggerPockets about owners not having their expectations met by their current Property Management Company.