01
Inbound · finding a tenantAttract, show, screen, sign.
A consistent leasing path with written criteria and clean records.
Rentals shouldn’t be a mess to run.
Property manager cost calculator
It’s your call. Type in your own numbers and see what each way leaves you. Sometimes a manager earns the fee, and this will say so. Nothing you type is sent or saved.
The gray numbers are my example. Type yours and the result updates as you type.
In dollars.
Percent of the rent.
Placement fee (use .5 for half a month).
In years. Longer stays mean fewer leasing fees.
My example: a manager costs about $2,100 a year ↓ breakdown
Add repairs, other fees, empty days and more
Your side of it
Ads, software, filling a vacancy.
Shows what running it yourself pays you an hour. Blank skips it.
In dollars. Counted on both sides.
Percent added to vendor bills, if your agreement has one.
Anything else in your agreement: lease renewal, inspections, admin fees, late fees the manager keeps.
In dollars. If you have a manager now.
Between tenants. Your honest guess. Blank means zero days.
Between tenants. Your honest guess. Blank means zero days.
In my example, a manager costs about
$2,100 a year
$175 a month · $21,000 over 10 years if nothing changes
The striped part is the difference. “Keep” means rent minus the costs in this calculator, before your mortgage, property taxes and insurance.
- Leasing fees +$1,000
- Management fees: 10% of 11 months’ rent ($11,000) +$1,100
- No 10% on the first month here, because that month’s rent is the leasing fee. If your manager charges 10% on all 12 months, the manager costs $2,200 a year, not $2,100.
- Your own costs and hours are not counted yet. Add them under “Add repairs, other fees, empty days and more”.
An estimate from the numbers you typed, not a promise. “Keep” means rent left after the costs on this page. The rent, your mortgage, property taxes and insurance are counted the same either way. Before income taxes: the IRS lists management fees among the rental expenses you can usually deduct (Publication 527), so the after-tax difference is smaller. Not tax advice. Earnings disclaimer
The operating model
One landlord. A repeatable system.
Not more software. The whole job, written down so plainly that someone else could pick it up. This is how I run mine. Mold it to fit yours.
02
Managing · during the leaseRun the home without living in your inbox.
One place for tenant messages. A plan for every repair request. Vendors lined up ahead of time. Records you can still find years later.
03
Outbound · the lease endsRenew the lease, or end it cleanly.
Renewals, non-renewals, move-out instructions, inspections, deposits, and the handoff to the next tenancy.
04
LastThen teach an AI how you run it.
What you wrote down becomes a knowledge base in your own files. Give it to the AI of your choice, so it works from your rules and not from generic advice. That’s your own AI property manager. It helps with the routine. You keep the judgment.
Running it yourself doesn’t mean doing every job. Need a plumber? Pay a plumber. That’s paying for one job, not a percentage of every rent check.
Free, in the open
Check my work before you join.
Everything in the library is public. Read one piece and decide for yourself.
Teach-first library · Featured DIY guide
Fair Housing Showing 101
A practical walkthrough for advertising and showing a rental consistently—without steering, improvising, or turning every prospect into a screening decision.
No email gate. No “book a call.” The public library should be useful even when you never join the community.
Landlord Baby Steps
The homework to do before you start — renting out a place for the first time, or taking over from your property manager — so the transition to managing it yourself is less of a scramble.
Fellow landlord, not guru
I built this to work when I wasn’t there.
I’m Rene. I own five properties. I live in one and rent out the other four in Florida.
Deployed, I had email, bad internet and a backwards time zone. I couldn’t drive over to check on anything, so everything had to be written down. It held up. I sum it up in three words: Control is cashflow. Whoever makes the calls decides what’s left.
What pays for this? I do. I don’t sell a course, coaching or a membership, and I pay for this site and its servers myself. One thing to know: the join link carries my Skool referral code. If you later pay Skool for a group or feature of your own, Skool may pay me a commission. It costs you nothing extra. The details are on one page. I built the community because I couldn’t find one when I started.
Nobody will care more about your livelihood than you.
Read the full storyLandlord Legends
Come build with fellow landlords.
A free community of DIY landlords: people who run their own rentals, or want to. Practical questions, honest feedback, and landlords a few steps ahead of you.
First rental still empty? Paying a manager? A property manager with rentals of your own? You’re welcome here. Nobody has perfect rentals. Bring yours as they are.
Join Landlord LegendsFellow landlords. Free to join.
It runs on Skool, a site for online groups. You’ll need a free Skool account. At the door you answer two short questions: what kind of landlord you are, and why you’re joining.