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.

it was right out of the TV show Silicon valley.. the owner of the building ( these were Tish buildings My dad rented in those back in the 70s :)) Anyway I digress the owner of the building had one entire floor dedicated to these startups.. in the middles of the floor was a ping pong table tons of Mountain Dew and red bull and about 30 little start ups..

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.