The compensation amount must be written in an object format (i.e. percentage of purchase price or flat fee) and not be open-ended.

So thats the other side of the coin.. by the time you find another one you will spend another inspection another apprasial fee another flight more hotel more meals out etc etc..

Then I found out they generally charge a fee to fill a vacancy.

Squeezing the architect costs to save a few thousand is pennies as compared to the hundreds of thousands coming by way of costs for construction (materials & labor), filing and inspection fees, etc.

In our24 years of experience, managing almost 100 S8 leases currently, the average S8 tenant has a FICO under 580, numerous collections from utility & cell phone companies, doesn't want to pay a security deposit, much less an application fee and claims they don't know how to fill out their S8 paperwork despite being in the program for several years - hint: they want YOU to do it for them.Most, not all, are eligible for government assistance due to a funeral-march of bad choices.REALITY: you are trust trading one set of problems for another.You can succeed with S8, but you need to understand the challenges and plan accordingly.

Bought the lot cash and found a bank who referred a builder to put down on paper to be responsible for a fee but understood that I would be a first time builder for my own personal build.

We have an agreement that they will manage the properties and the management company earns an asset management fee for ongoing management of the properties.  

And, as a Condo project everyone is sharing in the water bill by allocation of the HOA fee which should be increased if common area expenses have risen.

After paying closing costs, title fees, appraisal, origination, underwriting, processing, legal and other fees, the typical refinance costs about 1.75 - 2.5% of the loan amount just in closing costs (obviously before people yell at me, this varies drastically by state, but having done loans all over the country I find this to be a pretty accurate estimate).  2) Keeping the average 2% cost in mind and the fact that people typically refinance when rates drop about .75% - 1% or more, I wanted to see if paying an extra point now when I was already paying all the closing costs to buy the rate down made sense. 1 point can get you between .5% - .625% off the rate depending on the days pricing and the coupon you are pricing. 

Understand the fees involved and calculate the total cost for an entire year of management so you can compare the different managers.