I realize there are a lot of variables in this question, so let me do my best to fill in the blanks when I ask how much you would pay to an individual to act as your agent for a property. This is for a Boston, MA, 3 family house that is fully rented. The extent of the individual's duties would be to oversee the hiring of subcontractors, and making sure the rent is paid. A realtor was already hired/paid to find the tenants. The landscaping is subbed out. The utilities are on auto-pay . I am wondering what might be a reasonable monthly fee to pay someone to be the contact person for this one house?

My agent is empowered to "manage" the properties. For that I pay 5% of collected rents. "management" includes supervising contractors and collection of rents, but also could include other duties such as keeping track of renters, repairs, required and suggested maintenance, and could include payment of property taxes, mortgage payments, legal fees, supervision of evictions if needed, and other duties, including tenant and neighbor relationships, negotiation with tenants, contractors, local authorities and defense in court and accounting.

This seems to be approximately prevailing rate in Southern California.

Several ways of doing this. You can include in a single fee all duties including re-renting the units. Or do it piece meal. One price for managing and extra for re-renting and showing the units.

All inclusive fee, "1 Months Rent Per Unit".

Piece meal: Fee or just managing and sending over the repair people that bill you directly-As Moshe said, around 5%.

But the quality and experience of a real professional can not be measured in just price. While in college and working to support myself I had the best manager with a crack repair squad that charged me 1 months rent plus I got billed for the repairs. Well worth the money because I could sleep at night knowing things were getting done.

Then when I tried other management companies for apartment buildings, their handyman were over booked and underpaid so a flood would go on for hours if not days before someone would show up to fix it. In the long run to save a few hundred dollars it cost me THOUSANDS.

I personally would NEVER allow them to have access to my accounts, whether to collect rent or pay bills.

"I think an issue could arise with the wrong manager of maintenance. Every little thing the tenants want they run and take care of at an up charge because they or their brother is the contractor. I can see sending someone out to fix a loose kitchen cabinet door on a Sunday morning at time and a half rates. "

Of course it can. Thats why my 4th manager in 2 years started yesterday.

Does that mean that use of a manager is a bad idea?

Well, I hope manager #4 will work out better. Maybe I learned enough from #1,2 and #3 to be able to work out better techniques and arrangements to be able to make things more workable.

PM's around here charge from 10-20% of rents. Plus whatever it costs, with markup, for maintenance. They think nothing of sending a guy on Sunday morning to change a lightbulb - the horror stories from owners abound but no choice if you are a long-distance owner (or just too tired.)

That's why we are training one of our sons to be our long-distance manager, using Buildium as the general platform.

Another way is hire your own employee - that's what Jeffrey and I believe Brad and others on here do. We don't have the bandwidth to do that.

"PMs have diametrically opposed business goals to rental owners."

I disagree.

It is NOT the business goals of PMs that make them unworkable any less than saying the the business goals of landlords are diametrically opposed to those of tenants. I know from experience that landlord-tenant relationships CAN BE mutually beneficial and cooperative.

There are many businesses that want to and are capable of doing a good job, and with integrity, and there is no reason why a property manager cannot do that, too. You just have to find one with the right stuff.