They make money finding you a tenant, they make money when they have to get rid of a tenant, and when they have to supervise a maintenance request, and to use their maintenance people, and they even make money when you fire them.  

Because most PM contracts not only collect the monthly percentage, but they also charge to place a tenant, to kick out a tenant, to deal with tenant phone calls, to use their maintenance guy, to supervise the maintenance guy - they even profit when you fire them by charging you a month's rent.And if they want to make money, they need more and more places to manage, which means they won't have much time for yours.I really believe that if someone wants an investment that is truly passive, then they need to buy some bonds.  

They said it was an "emergency" and took money out of her reserve fund for the maintenance man, the PM to "supervise the emergency," and the electrician and of course, the new electrical breaker box.If they'd called my daughter she would have said, "Just tell her not to plug in 50 hair dryers at the same time."

But, some folk wonder why I just tagged them, so don't think I"m just directing all of the following at you lol:The bureaucrats or business folk who have never worked at a clerk level, or supervised clerks, have no idea how much is involved in managing even the paperwork for something like this.If there are 17,000 rentals - you're talking about 17,000 files.  

They are a lot of drama  and take a lot of hand holding and constant supervision to keep in line.

They even charged her for "supervising" their own maintenance people. 

Better it be under supervision.

The following is general advice that you should consider before retaining myself or another attorney to counsel and assist you with this process.That said, I advise my clients that they are safest if the terminate the tenant's possession of a unit by 1) engaging in some action that effects the transfer of possession (such as having the tenant return the keys to the landlord), or 2) engaging in the eviction process all the way through the court supervised move out.If you don't legally terminate the tenancy before retaking the unit then you leave yourself exposed to a claim that you engaged in a self-help eviction, meaning you removed the tenant from the unit without the legal right to do so.

They make their real money paying their maintenance people, charging a fee for supervising their maintenance people, charging a fee if there's a problem, for an eviction, to look for a new tenant.Most PMCs, unfortunately, make more money when there are problems. 

Once the tenant had most of his stuff out and needed one more day to pick up the rest, we let him do that under supervision, and what he didn't take we were able to put on the curb.