Backyard cottage for the income, but who actually deals with the tenant?

The minimum fee thing is real and it's not us being difficult. My team's floor is $125 a unit, because a single ADU costs about the same to service as a unit in a fourplex, and there's no other door on the property to spread a trip charge across. What actually decides whether a small shop says yes is geography. If your street is already on someone's route, one unit is easy. If you're twenty minutes past everything else they manage, expect a no or a higher minimum.

Ask them who takes the 10pm call, too. Some outfits answer, some have voicemail until morning, and with an owner on site the tenant just knocks on your door instead.

marlow, ask about turnover before you compare fees. I've got six lots on my list and the ones near the community college pencil great on rent and terrible on lease-up, because a studio like that turns every twelve months. Full month leasing fee on $1,600 every single year is $133 a month on top of management, which more or less doubles what you thought you were paying.

Underwrite the management cost whether or not you hire anyone. On $1,600 gross I'd put 8 percent to management and another 5 percent to vacancy, then a real maintenance reserve, and you land near $1,300 before the money touches your mortgage. If you self-manage, the 8 percent doesn't vanish, it becomes your unpaid time, and if you ever want to hand the unit off later the line item has to already be in the model or the deal reprices on you.

The number I'd want from those two builders is not rent. It's the all-in cost with utility work included, because that's what determines whether $1,300 net is a good outcome or a slow one.

Before you talk to managers, read the permit conditions your city attaches to the ADU. Some jurisdictions bar rentals under 30 days on the accessory unit, which rules out the nightly-rental version some people assume they can fall back on, and a handful still condition the permit on you occupying one of the two units. Those conditions vary city to city and sometimes get recorded against the title.

Also pull out your homeowners policy and find the language about renting a portion of the premises to others. Mine reads like it contemplates a roommate and nothing else. Your carrier may want a different form once there's a separate dwelling with its own lease, and that conversation goes better before the unit is finished than after.

On the financing side, the projected ADU rent that a lender will count comes from an appraiser's market rent estimate on a rent schedule form, not from what a builder or property manager tells you the unit will fetch. Fannie Mae's rule counting ADU income toward qualifying on an owner-occupied one-unit purchase takes effect in March 2026 and caps the ADU portion at 30 percent of qualifying income, and management expense isn't the thing that reduces it, the vacancy factor and the cap are. Get the exact treatment from your lender in writing, because overlays differ between shops.

Does anyone keep a handyman on a small monthly retainer for one unit, or is that only worth it at four or five doors?

beacon, retainer is overkill for one unit. Have two numbers in your phone and pay by the trip.

marlow, most of your year-one calls won't be management problems, they'll be punch list items the builder should be fixing under warranty. A door that swells, a GFCI that trips on the bathroom circuit, a shower drain that was never sloped right. Keep the builder's warranty terms somewhere you can find them, and make sure the ADU has its own water shutoff and its own breaker panel access that doesn't require walking through your house. Otherwise every plumbing problem out there becomes you in a bathrobe at midnight.