Property Manager vs. Owner Managed

I had a PM initially - not-so-good experience and I now self-manage (which I had considered initially) and I love it. When your time is needed for R&M or tenant issues, you have control over the decisions that are made and what those decisions will cost you, and there's less confusion as you deal with the tenants directly; and when your time is not needed, you're not paying for a service you don't in fact need. I worked out I would pay overall 9% of the rent to a PM over the course of a one-year lease (incl leasing fees, account fees, admin fees and mgmt fees). If I had discounted my rent by up to 9%, I would have opened up my market of applicants and generated more competition for the property, potentially attracting a better tenant, so this worked in my favour. As it is, at the current rent, I am $1,500 better off per year. You sound like you know what you're doing and you do it well. Keep going!

 

PM or not, you always need to be on top of things. If you are time poor then spend some time on sourcing a good PM, start by looking on this forum. Could also help if you set a fixed time each week/fortnight to "manage" your IP(s). Don't jump in whenever it crosses your mind.

If you think bad tenants are hard wait till you to deal with bad PMs. Having said that you need to keep educating yourself about typical self-management issues like being too soft with tenants, basic understanding of legal processes and landlord and tenant rights, probably attend a few tribunal hearings - you'll learn a lot.

 

... A lot about how extremely important written / photographic evidence is and how valid and timely your notices have to be.

 

It sounds like you are comfortable with doing it yourself and even with a property manager, you will still take control anyway.

I've seen a lot of bad management from private landlords - 2 baliff evictions today and both were privately managed and everything in a horrid mess.

There are some wonderful self managers too (I just don't get to look into their files because they don't need people like me).

I was doing a let only for a self managing lady once and she was vetting all the tenants, she wanted to do the searches and choose herself so I forwarded all enquiries to her.
Once someone was chosen she told me she was going to personally call all the enquiries and let them know out of courtesy that the property was now leased.

Such a nice thing to do and something that most of us property managers don't have time to do. Applicants yes but not every single enquiry.