Michael rather than looking at 10k houses that are thrashed and need more repair in a high crime area than the property will ever be worth I would go to areas where you can pick up nice properties for in the 30's to 50's.Lower property taxes,will appreciate faster,and have better rent growth.I would rather have one of those than 3 of the trashy properties that never ever turn a cent in profit and cost me money.

With only 1 rental you won't get management for 10%, it'll likely be 12 - 14% depending on turnover (they'll charge you 1/2 to 1 months rent to fill a vacancy).Florida is a very depressed housing market.

Look for what other storage units in the same area, of similar size charge and use that to price this one.

Our idea of a good time on weekends is to go look at houses and critique floor plans, space use, etc.What I've found is that a good architect will, for a few thousand dollars, crank out a floor plan faster and better than I can and with much less strain and stress on my heart.

Understand that a big company will charge them 10% plus 1/2 a month's rent to fill a vacancy.

Allows me to even manage other investor properties and charge management fees.I know Quickbooks has an online version so if you have internet on your phone that would be possible.ThanksDan

I think I like Steve's idea better...but if I did buy and rent the gas dryer out, how much would you charge to rent something like that?

How much do people normally charge for assignment fees or finders fees?

They're smaller, tend to be on long, skinny lots (for a while most cities charged property tax on how many feet of street access you had, so you had a lot of long, skinny lots), and are in older areas of town.You can also find out the years properties were built by checking out the county records, or other means of snooping on one's neighbors- like http://www.city-data.com/, which is a good, free resource to get demographics of an area, and you can also go up and down streets (in my city at least) and find out what the tax records say- bedrooms, bathrooms, tax appraised value, all that good stuff.There's lots of places and tools to get that information, but that's one of the sites I use a lot.

If they DO NOT charge rent they may deduct the additional interest and RE taxes.