Owner-managed subs on a $64k rental rehab, or pay 18 percent for a GC I don't have to think about

I manage rehabs on other people's houses for a living and the honest split isn't hours, it's who eats the gap.

Here's what the 18 covers that people forget when they price it against sub totals. When your tile guy shows up and the drywall isn't ready, somebody has to have that fight and then find him another day in the schedule. When the panel upgrade fails inspection on a detail, somebody has to get the electrician back without paying a second trip. When the vanity you picked is discontinued, somebody has to pick a replacement in an hour, not a week.

A good GC absorbs all of that. You'll still be on site, but you'll be on site looking at finishes rather than solving a scheduling collision at 7am.

A bad GC does not absorb it, and you pay 18 percent to be the one making those calls anyway. So the question isn't GC versus self-managed. It's whether this specific person does that work. Ask him who his site lead is, and ask for two investor clients he's finished for in the last year, then actually call them and ask about the last thing that went wrong.

On the drainage at the back corner, get that scoped separately before anything else starts. Water problems are the most common source of a rehab going from $64k to $80k, and you want the price on it before you're committed.

One thing worth pricing out before anything else is the licensing question. Depending on your state, pulling permits as the owner on your own rental can be limited or come with conditions, and some jurisdictions treat an owner-builder permit differently from one pulled by a licensed contractor. That varies state to state and sometimes by county, so call your building department and ask what they'll let you pull as an owner on a non-owner-occupied property before you assume the self-managed path is even open.

If they'll only issue to a licensed GC for the panel and the drainage, half your $11.5k saving disappears into hiring a permit-holder for those pieces anyway.

I ran a smaller version of this, about $38k, self-managed, and I want to push back on the framing a bit. The hours weren't the expensive part for me. The expensive part was that I didn't know what good looked like, so I approved work I shouldn't have and paid to redo the shower pan.

@trellis is right that the 18 buys somebody to eat the gaps. It also buys somebody who knows when a trade is walking off with a bad job. If this is your first rehab of this size, that's worth more than the scheduling.

On a 10 week job with a real job on top of it, I'd pay the 18 this once and watch how he sequences it. Then decide on the second house.