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Self-managing from 800 miles away cost me a tenant and two months vacancy last winter

nataliehsunataliehsuServicePRO14

I converted the place in Tucson in March 2023 and moved to Portland for work. Figured I could handle it myself, save the 8% management fee, maybe $140 a month on a $1,750 rent. Found a tenant through Zillow, did the lease over DocuSign, thought I had it figured out. November the heat exchanger cracked on the furnace. Tenant texted me at 10pm on a Wednesday. I spent four hours on my phone trying to find an HVAC company in Tucson willing to go out next day, finally got someone for $189 diagnostic plus $680 for the part and labor. That part I could handle. What I could not handle was that the tenant had already decided I was a bad landlord by the time the tech showed up, and she gave notice in January. So I had a vacant house in February, which is not a great month to find tenants in Tucson, and it sat until April 1. Two months at $1,750 is $3,500 gone, plus the $680 repair, plus $95 I paid a neighbor's kid to mow and check on it twice while it was empty. Against the $1,680 I saved in management fees over twelve months, I came out negative $2,595 on the self-management experiment. I hired a local PM in April. The fee is now just a line in the spreadsheet and I stopped thinking about it.

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1 reply

renee_duboisrenee_duboisPassive

The February vacancy window in Tucson is real and it bites hard. Snowbird season locks up the short-term demand and serious long-term renters have usually already signed somewhere by January, so anything sitting empty in February is basically waiting for April applicants anyway.

The math you did is the exact math more people need to run before they decide to self-manage across time zones. $140 a month sounds like savings until one tenant decides you're unreliable and you're staring down a two-month hole.

The thing nobody says enough: the repair itself wasn't the problem, the four-hour response lag was, and a local PM has that HVAC contact in their phone already.

0renee_duboisrenee_duboisPassive
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