Property Management Company or Rent on your Own

[Anonymous]

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

Don’t listen to this bitter comment unless you want to get sued. Property managers are not necessary if you are an experienced landlord but they ARE worth it if you are a novice.

[Anonymous]

For those who own rental property, how did you learn to do it?

I’m considering renting out property that I own. Any recommendations for books or websites to get started?

[Anonymous]

Agree, property managers are terrible. They add little value and take too much money but if you can’t deal with leasing or basic management, you may not have a choice.

[Anonymous]

I think a good property manager is worth the 8% a month charge. I wish it were less, but I gladly pay it. A good PM vets tenants (the most critical part of being a LL is looking a credit (!!) before a person moves in; knowing which lease clauses to tighten up etc.), and has a maintenance team / handyman at the ready.
I am very happy to have hired a PM.

[Anonymous]

Dc is one of the worst states for landlords. It can seriously take months to get a person out of your home. I would definitely pay a professional to vet the tenant.

[Anonymous]

1) Are you comfortable to do the work to find potential renters, show the rental, and screen tenants?
2) Do you have the time to be on call 24/7 (ish) in case something breaks and you need to get it repaired? (Is the condition of your home such that it will need someone fairly often to fix maintenance things?)

Obviously you'll save money by not having a property manager, but it depends how much time you have to deal with hassle arranging tenants and dealing with them if something goes wrong.

We moved far away when we rented out our house, so we got a property manager.

[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. Own a lot of property and did a mistake of hiring PMs like 15 years ago. Never again

[Anonymous]

Same. Made the mistake of not properly vetting a tenant, costing me tens of thousands in repair to the damage left. Prop manager is a pro at vetting, which reduces possibility of crappy tenant who will take time to evict in DC.