Owners mistakenly ASSUME all PMCs offer the exact SAME SERVICES and PERFORM those services EXACTLY THE SAME WAY, so price is the only differentiator.So, the first question they usually ask a PMC is about fees - instead of asking about services and HOW those services are executed.EXAMPLE: PMC states they will handle tenant screening – what does that specifically mean?

My official W2 job is being on call at a medical clinic to do pre-employment drug screens for contractors starting work at a very big (13 billion $ annual revenue) local industry. 

To think about screening tenants myself & creating house rules for potential roommate tenants seems like a big task.

Screening will be your most important skill.You can market your property most effectively on affordablehousing.com (formerly gosection8.com)

Screening services don't check everything.

I also screen the company owner (or President, CEO, etc) and they are personally responsible for damages.Nobody pays that much and then lets their employees trash a place.

And if after a while I have a portfolio of strong stable properties while working my day job, even better.Long story short, I could get 10% through stocks, etc. but the primary difference is that I take pride in seeing something physical in operation, vs. just numbers on a screen.

"$995 for a local apartment complex for which he claims never to have lived at.I am very new to this whole process so I have not seen many different cases or scenarios pertaining to screening or anything, but I can't seem to figure out how someone can be a previous home owner, approaching retirement, with 3 years credit history.

So, in my process, I do NO pre-screening and simply schedule 2 open houses per week.

And than we get into the "fun" things like how to operate a website that drives millions of traffic weekly, so one can actually FIND a tenant, the various software systems to pre-screen persons, schedule showings, operate lease signings, and on and on and on.