Is a property manager worth 10%?

When it pays

• You live more than about 45 minutes from the property.
• Your working day cannot absorb an emergency call.
• You own more than two or three units and have not built a reliable set of trades.

When it does not: you are local, reasonably handy, and have one solid tenant in one house. That is a job, but it is a small one.

Judge a manager on the right things

1. 1Ask who their plumber and their air-conditioning company are, and what the response time is.
2. 2Ask how many evictions they filed last year and how they went.
3. 3Ask how maintenance is approved, and at what threshold they call you.
4. 4Ask how they handle a tenant who is two weeks late, specifically.

Rent collection is the easy part and every manager does it. The vendor bench and the legal process are where the fee is earned or wasted.

Read the agreement for the markup

The headline is the management percentage. The real cost often sits in the maintenance markup, the leasing fee, the renewal fee and the mark-up on turnover work. Ask for those in writing and model a year with one turnover in it.

The alternative for a local owner

Build the bench yourself: one plumber, one air-conditioning company, one handyman and one contractor who will answer the phone. That is what the fee buys, and if you are local you can assemble it in a year. The turnover list is in what is worth replacing between tenants, and the wider market view in is Central Florida still a decent rental market.

What to keep even if you self-manage

• A written lease reviewed by somebody who does this in Florida.
• A screening process you apply identically to every applicant.
• A maintenance request channel that creates a record.
• A contractor who answers the phone, which is the part that is hardest to replace.

Self-managing without those four is where the fee looks cheap and the year gets expensive. With them, a local owner with one or two houses is usually better off keeping the ten per cent.

How to change manager without losing the tenant

Check the notice period in the management agreement, agree a handover date, and get the tenant file transferred in full: lease, deposit records, inspection reports, maintenance history and contact details.

Tell the tenant yourself, in writing, before the change. A tenant who hears it from a new company they have never dealt with is a tenant deciding whether to renew.