McElhannon: Wouldn't all the other 17 years of expenses (taxes, maintenance, fees, etc)  also be deducted from the price and not just depreciation? 

Are you captive to the building HOA for increasing fees?

Once the initial 3-month learning period ends, you're essentially on your own unless you can continue to afford the $500 monthly fee.

Long vacancies (6 months+), ridiculous turn times and costs, surprise add-on fees, several days to answer questions, and then responses incomplete.   

Then it's 8.5% and a 1.5% referral fee (if I get my friends to help fund his deals).

I can only see the benefit of forming a self performing property management company if you believe you can be more effective on cost and service than the local 3rd property operators and even cost can be tricky to calculate because most focus on the management fee that's charged rather than the cost to put out fires when they do arise.

We calculated the collateral value of each property, and told him we would be willing to do a release based on (1) a payoff of our estimate of that properties collateral value PLUS (2) a extra fee (profit) to us of $50,000.  

Also in many instances that I have seen the fees are very high for managing the investor pool and the property management and the returns may be comparable to a CD with the risk.

We interviewed 3 realtors:Realtors:Realtor #1: 6% sales fee - very friendly but very "salesy".

I have an opportunity to raise capital with a private individual at a flat interest-only rate as a way to reduce interest charges and eliminate origination and service fees.