We are planning to relocate outside of Texas within the next year and want to rent our house. I know a lot of military people rent their houses when they PCS, so I figured it's worth asking here.

Do you hire a management company? Get a local friend to handle it? Do it yourself?

How do you handle the tenant selection process from afar, and when you get a tenant, how do you handle rent payments? How do you handle any maintenance issues?

By all means hire a management company. It protects you AND your renters.

Grew up as an AF dependent, then spent 21 years AF active duty. That's what my dad did and that's what I did.

What did you normally pay the management company?

I retired in 1991, moved to OK, and bought a house and haven't moved since. Sorry, I don't have an answer for your question.

Left Denver for California (Hollywood) in 2004. Rented my house out using a fantastic property management company from 2005-2013. Finally sold my house in Highlands Ranch last year.

The property management company took care of everything including finding tenants and taking the "my heater just went out in the middle of the night in the dead of winter" phone calls. I paid them about 10% of the rent. They handled it all and just direct deposited my proceeds about 15 days after they got the rent check from the tenants. Would definitely recommend doing it that way again.

The main problem is that these property management companies are very localized. So... I have a house in California that I've been renting since 2008 after I moved to Sydney, Australia. My property management company in SoCal is OK. My house in SoCal is 50 years older than my house in Denver was so there are a lot fewer things that can go wrong (no whole house humidifier, dishwasher, gas fireplace, or A/C, etc.). They've been on top of any minor problems I've had.

But, in contrast to the way the Denver folks operated, these folks in California are so old school that they've been mailing a check every month to deposit my rental proceeds. They just switched to Direct Deposit this year. Again, about 10% or so of the rent goes to them and I don't have to worry about getting calls from overseas in the middle of the night.

quote:

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... "my heater just went out in the middle of the night in the dead of winter"...

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And there you have it in a nutshell! That's what I meant when I posted the management company protects both the owner AND the tenant.

And I recall now that 10% is the rate normally charged. But of course, that doesn't count any repairs, etc that have to be made.

I pay 8%, plus we have to keep $400 in an escrow for repairs. The mgmt company calls if any repairs are estimated over $200, so I have some control over spending. We also keep our home warranty, and have given the mgmt company access so they file the requests for big maintenance. In Texas your homeowners policy is already over the $300k catastrophic injury, so you won't need to add the mgmt company as a beneficiary (assuming it's still mortgaged, disregard that part if it's paid off). We get our check by the 10th of every month, so it's not even a paycheck cycle late

We have a home in Killen and use Tri City. Their rate was 12% which was more than the other companies (8-10%) but they had no fees, only show your home personally and require a 700+ credit score to rent. They rented it within two weeks. We also have to keep an escrow ($300) and have to authorize any repairs in excess of the escrow. I would absolutely recommend using a property manager over any other option.

Just another reason to go with a property management company:

Squatters take over soldier's home

This might be better suited for the Business board, but would it be better to set up a DBA management company so I can claim all the management fees and repairs as business expenses to offset the tax liability of the rental income?

I don't think you have to set up a DBA to claim those expenses. But a lot of landlords set up an LLC for obvious reasons.