The most important data point that you have left out is the rent you will get per month.Normally, know the rent that you can charge before you even make an offer.

I think I'm going to call the "for rents" nearby the property to see what other owners are charging and what they're doing for renter's insurance.Thanks to everyone!

I am out in oregon if anyone else has any info and that helps.When a bank does an appraisal I assume thu charge you for it?

In my experience 50% of the work is finding the property and 50% is getting it to settlement.Special circumstances can be difficult to get to settlement and so anything that's an estate, short sale, multiple owners etc. is worth more than average.For me (and I can only speak for me ever), I charge 3% for the whole shebang.

If you're a solid PM and market yourself well, you can charge more AND pull in more business.I know several landlords, myself included, that would gladly pay another couple of % for a competent and straight forward PM vs the muck that is most of them.

It would be great if I could use a platform like kickstarter.com where everyone gives the site their credit card info and once I hit a minimum number of tickets it would charge them all.

Anyone know how I can charge referral fees to lenders by giving them business?

We started doing the land lording ourselves while we lived there and then passed if off to professional property management when we moved, which was well worth the 10% they charge!

Even though its a politically charged topic, Obamacare might give you some options as an individual that you didn't have previously.

There is a group that meets for lunch in Layton as part of the Salt Lake REIA.Tim Fenton is usually in charge of setting it up, but I don't see one listed on www.slreia.com right now.Darren, if you would like to get connected you can check that website later, or send me a PM for Tim's number.They used to hold it on the 1st Wednesday of each month.Trevor