For one, if you qualify as an accredited investor (if you are near financial independence then you likely will), then you could look into private placements whereby you could be a passive investment in an apartment syndication.

How much to pay for placement?

Hopefully 5% will do it.Kelly, I just saw your 1/2 month placement fee. 

Some lenders will say that they won’t lend to you as an LLC, others may have no problem at all, and still others will allow your LLC, but will also insist on personal liability or recourse of each of the partners (members/managers, to be precise, in the case of your LLC.) it really depends.

Also you need to see if the PM is going to charge a rental placement fee many times this can be one months rent.. and a lot of times its outsourced.. but you do need to account for it.. with rentals in these areas 18 months I think is average.. so you are going to have placement fee's  lets say at least every 24 months on average.. so something to think about.. although for napkin math at a 1150 rental.. if you use 40% or so for fixed overhead you should be in the ball park.. as the rent number goes down you may need to move to 50% or even 60% to accurately capture run costs.Also its important to note in these homes that are being sold they have no rental history to guage them by.. like you would have buying an apartment.. so you could get the tenant from He@@  and your cost are higher.. you could get a fantastic tenant that lives clean pays consistently and lives there 5 years..

@Ned Jackson  you would be shocked at how quickly tenants can trash units.also lets look at this logically.your a local PM you own the company you have 500 units you manage.. that will entail a secretary ( usually out source placement for a fee to the real estate community maybe a combination) you have a full time maintenance guy maybe two.. but at most you have 4 employees.now vacancies being 5% generally in any market your dealing with 25 turn overs a month.. but lets say your market is spectacular and you only deal with 10 or 15 a month.. those are going to be time intensive they require full inspection.. section 8 which takes time to coordinate if your doing those. get bids talk to owners etc etc..

That's precisely why I got into the industry.

I did not want to hijack his post so decided to start a follow up discussion on placement of these safety features.Side note- Water alarms:  How many of you have water alarms?  

Then I pointed out that one of the families at our church has an adult child with Down’s Syndrome who is very precise on being on time.

in the gated communities I pay $75/mo max. 5) add $230/mo interest, forget vacancy, placement, management fees you’re trying to make $1200/yr on $140k.