owners keep asking us to prep their listings. how do i price that?

I manage 41 doors, mostly small multifamily plus a dozen single family. Seven of those owners sold in the last 24 months, and in five of the seven the tenant moved out and the owner asked me to "get it ready to show" because I already have the keys, the lockbox and the cleaner.

So far I've done it inside the management agreement for nothing, which was stupid. What it actually took on the last one: two site visits, a punch list for the handyman, coordinating carpet, and then two days of me buying towels, a rug and a bowl of lemons at a big box store so the listing photos didn't look like an empty rental. Call it 11 hours of my time plus 380 of stuff I never got reimbursed for.

Real staging is not what I did. A vacant three bed with rented furniture here quotes 2,400 to 3,000 for the first month. My owners are yield buyers selling at 190k to 260k and they wince at 500.

Options on my desk: a flat listing prep fee in the management agreement, an hourly project rate, or hand it to a stager and take nothing. I'm also unclear whether taking anything from the stager for the handoff is even allowed for a licensed manager here, since my broker's compliance person gave me a vague answer.

What I keep circling is whether a light prep tier at 650 flat is a product or just a way to lose 11 hours with a receipt attached.