Interviewing property managers before buying anything is worth the extra step, and here is what it can reveal

Before buying a rental, it is worth calling several management shops in each submarket under consideration and asking for a blank management agreement, a sample monthly owner statement, and average days to lease over the past year. Being upfront that a purchase is still 6 to 12 months out tends to filter out the shops worth working with: some will send everything, some send only the agreement, and a shop that will not share anything until a property is owned is telling a prospective owner something useful on its own. The numbers that come back can change a submarket decision entirely. Say one submarket quotes 10 percent management fees with a half month leasing fee, and days to lease across three shops comes back in the 20s and low 30s. A second submarket quotes a lower 9 percent fee but a full month leasing charge, with days to lease running into the 40s and beyond. On a 1,300 dollar unit, an extra 25 days of vacancy costs roughly 1,070 dollars a year, which swamps the one point of fee saved by choosing the cheaper submarket. The sample owner statements matter too: a statement that shows only net numbers with no invoice detail is worth pushing back on and asking for the itemized version, even before a purchase is made. The blank management agreement is often the most useful document to request first, since it is the least emotional part of the process and tends to show how a shop actually thinks about the relationship.