Study what has sold at a solid price and quickly.

They will waste your time and you will have no choice but to take action against them.

I wish I could pull something off like that... basically, its a fee to make sure you don't waste the lenders/broker's time.

I pull pretty solid lists, I find a lot of my deals off market, just thought I could reach more if I have a few full time callers on the phones.While i'm at it, how are you guys finding good deals in today's world?

Quote from @Matt McNabb: I'm a solid $400k/yr job in NYC and have $250k to begin investing as my first step into building a portfolio, although I don't have time to be a landlord so I have to account for management fees.  

Do they have solid banking relationships and broker relationships to lease out the units. 

. --- Who gets all the phone calls and wastes time calming a tenant down because the owner's contractor doesn't show up as scheduled after they took time off from work or a 3 day job takes 3 weeks?

You should fire them right away and talk to an attorney to prevent the loss, but I wouldn't expect much and it could be a waste since a company that does this will not have the money to do anything.When you have just one unit and you are looking for PM companies, your options are the bottom of the barrel because it's not a good use of the big one's time.

and you also can't waste time while under contract.

Both strategies have potential here, so it depends on your goals:Strategy 1 (Duplex) can be a solid choice for building equity and generating cash flow, especially in Austin’s competitive short-term rental market.