Updated November 2026. First published March 2023.
Our fees are on the website, every line of them. I did that on purpose, because the most common question I get from a new owner is some version of "why are you more than the guy down the street," and I'd rather answer it in public than one phone call at a time.
So here's the admission: sometimes we are more. And the thing you're actually paying for isn't on the fee schedule at all. It's in the reviews.
Read the tenant reviews first
Before you compare a single percentage, pull up each manager's Google reviews and read the ones written by tenants. Not the owners, the tenants. An owner writes a review once a year when the statement looks good. A tenant writes one the week the furnace went out, or the week it got fixed in a day, or the day the deposit came back. Those reviews are the closest thing you'll get to watching a manager work.
I did this on our own markets this fall and published the results on this site, including the places we came up short. I'm not going to repeat the numbers here. I'll tell you what reading them taught me instead. Almost none of the reviews are about the property. They're about whether somebody answered the phone, whether the repair happened, and whether the person on the other end treated them like a human being.
Why a tenant's review is your money
Here's the part owners miss. A happy tenant isn't a nice extra. A happy tenant is the whole return. A tenant who likes living in your home takes care of it, tells us when something breaks while it's still cheap to fix, pays on time, talks to us when they can't, and renews. Every one of those is a line on your statement. Vacancy, turn cost, repair cost, collections, placement fees, all of it goes down when the tenant is happy and all of it goes up when they're not.
I'm a Christian, and treating a tenant well is where that starts for me. But the business case stands on its own. The manager with the better tenant reviews is the manager whose owners make more money, and I'd put that up against any fee schedule in the valley.
What the fee actually buys
The things that make a tenant happy are the things that cost a manager money. A repair line answered around the clock. A request reviewed within two business days. A person who calls back. A screening standard applied the same way to everyone, so the tenant next door is a good neighbor. The fee pays for the people doing that work, and a cheaper fee usually means fewer of them.
Watch the fees that aren't the management fee, too. Placement, renewal, setup, inspection, markup on repairs. A low percentage with a long list of add-ons can cost more than a higher percentage with a short one. Our full schedule is on the pricing page, and I'd ask any other manager for the same thing before you sign.
The comparison I'd actually make
Don't compare percentages. Read the tenant reviews, and ask every manager you're interviewing how long their tenants stay. Then look at the fees. If ours are higher and the reviews explain why, you'll know what you're paying for. If they don't, hire the other guy, and I mean that.
If you want to see what a month with us looks like on your actual property, request a portfolio review. If you'd rather talk, call 719.581.RENT.
A note on AI. The thoughts, experience, and opinions here are mine. This is not AI content. It's not written by AI. I didn't just give it a prompt and out popped this blogpost. This is real. However, I do use AI as a writing and editing tool to help shape and polish the final text, and to check facts and figures before publishing. If it feels too polished to be really written by Chuck, or a detector flags this post, that's why. AI is a tool, and I used it to help with the words, spelling, and grammar, not the thinking.