Property Management Company or Rent on your Own

[Anonymous]

My mother bought a property near my family in DC
We currently manage all maintenance for it.

Sadly, she was recently diagnosed with cancer and will need treatment, so she won't be using the home for at least a couple of years.

We'd like to rent it out. I anticipate helping to manage her care in her state of origin, so I will be in DC less and won't have as much time to manage the rental of the property.

Two questions:

Should we hire a property management company to find and screen tenants and maintain the home?

Should we rent the home furnished, partially furnished, or unfurnished?

[Anonymous]

I would find a property manager and take their advice on the second question. Sorry about your mom!

[Anonymous]

Is it part of an estate, and if so, are you the sole heir? If there are other heirs, you should definitely hire a property manager. It's cleaner, and you have a third party in the middle of it to protect yourself.

[Anonymous]

Agent here. I'm so sorry to hear about your mom.
I would definitely consider a property manager to watch over the home if you will be renting it out. Maybe I'm overly cautious, but it will save you a lot of hassle.

[Anonymous]

Hire a manager. Talk to s few.
You don't want to deal with applications, tenants, repairs, etc.
If it's furnished now I would definitely remove and store if necessary anything of great value, sentimental value.

[Anonymous]

whatever you do, never ever hire a property management company. They will take you to cleaners and you will never make any money.

[Anonymous]

I don’t know what kind of property we are talking about and where. We have a few rentals in DC that we manage. It can be a lot of work, but we have several properties. We had started with a management company but realized they did very little and took a good chunk of our money.

[Anonymous]

We rented out a home the past couple of years in NoVA. So, a caveat -- I've heard it is a lot easier to be a landlord in VA than in DC.

At any rate, we rented it out ourselves. The property management companies wanted an entire month's rent to find a tenant and then another month's rent to manage the property. That would significantly cut into the money we would make. And my DH is very handy, most things he can fix himself, so we actually preferred to handle maintenance issues ourselves rather than have someone else handling it. We got very lucky and had wonderful tenants who were super nice and paid every month on time and let us know about any issues with the house. And they stayed for two years.

We did find the tenants ourselves, and that was a much bigger hassle than I thought it would be. We used Zillow, which is useful in many ways, but a big problem with it is that they allow prospective tenants to pay one application fee and then apply to as many places as they want with only that one fee. This can result in a lot of applications from people who aren't all that serious about your house, and the back and forth with people and the showing of the house can take up a lot of time. We were able to insist that people applying have a certain credit score (I think we said 740, but I don't for sure remember) and that helps a lot with the screening of prospective tenants, but I'm not sure if you can do that in DC.

In sum, finding the tenant is a bigger pain than you think, but if you get good tenants and your house isn't truly falling apart or something, then the management part isn't that hard.

Happy to answer any more specific questions. We did just sell the house, but mainly for tax reasons not because we hated renting it out or something.

[Anonymous]

We have 2 rental properties and have done both options. We basically came to the same conclusion that others did — the manager did almost nothing for a significant sum of money. We now manage both ourselves. We even went through a pretty bad tenant eviction issue last year and I was actually glad I was the manager— yes it was a huge hassle, but I was able to be on top of everything right away, no middle man, and we got it resolved quickly with the right legal steps. That being said, we only decided to handle everything ourselves after several years of being landlords. If you are new to landlording I probably wouldn’t recommend jumping right in especially with a family illness ongoing.

[Anonymous]

Normally I would say do it yourself. But given that your mental focus will be with your mom and her care, I'd suggest interviewing a few companies and picking one to use. It's not worth the savings if you are helping your ill mother while trying to navigate an emergency plumbing situation from out of town. And if the cost is prohibitive, then you should honestly just go ahead and sell the house now rather than become a landlord.

[Anonymous]

Have done both - with and without - and I really appreciate having a prop manager. The manager found phenomenal tenants and having an experienced team manage it makes it a very pleasant experience. Give yourself that peace of mind now.

[Anonymous]

we did it ourselves until my husband passed. The first prop mgr I had to stay on top of, but the one that bought them out a couple years ago is much better, especially now that I'll be moving out of state soon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know what kind of property we are talking about and where. We have a few rentals in DC that we manage. It can be a lot of work, but we have several properties. We had started with a management company but realized they did very little and took a good chunk of our money.

same with me. I have 10+ properties in DC and PMs are suckers for your money.

[Anonymous]

Rent on your own, always.

[Anonymous]

Hire a handyman/manager, but not a company.
They promise a lot, but fail to know your property.
They are too busy collection fees that come when tenant has to sign up with their company's website. Then they push payments through Walmart as an option and who know what. It's like all other business they are pushing on tenant and probably on landlord.
They showed me a dirty place, and failed to fix the leak in bedroom. I called them out as an applicant and later tenant. Landlord fired them as I got it done myself.