Is a property manager worth it for one rental in 2027?
For owners of a single rental home in Canada or the US. A year of managing one house month by month, the hours it takes, what a manager would charge for the same year and how to decide.
Property management for one rental
This guide is for owners of a single rental home in Canada or the US who are deciding whether to manage it themselves. A full-service property manager usually charges a monthly percentage of the rent plus a leasing fee when they find a new tenant. For one house, that tends to work out to around $115 to $125 for every hour of work they take off your hands. Whether that’s worth it depends less on the fee than on your time, how far you live from the home and how often your tenants change.
The fee is easy to find. The hours are harder, because they arrive unevenly, a quiet month and then a weekend gone. So the clearest way to decide is to lay out a real year.
A year of managing one house
Here’s a year for a three bedroom house renting at $2,800 a month. The tenant gives notice in the spring and moves out at the end of June, and the new one moves in mid July. The hours are rough estimates of what each task takes, not counting travel.
| Month | What happens | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| January | Rent comes in. A question about the thermostat. | 1 |
| February | The furnace stops on a Saturday night. Finding a technician, letting them in, following up. | 4 |
| March | The tenant gives notice for June 30. | 1 |
| April | Checking rents nearby, setting the price, photos. | 3 |
| May | Listing, answering inquiries, twelve showings, applications, screening. | 15 |
| June | Signing the new lease, the move-out inspection, the deposit, booking cleaning and paint. | 8 |
| July | Two weeks empty. Move-in inspection, keys, utilities. | 4 |
| August | A dripping tap. | 2 |
| September | Rent comes in. | 1 |
| October | Gutters and getting ready for winter. | 2 |
| November | A neighbour’s complaint about noise. | 2 |
| December | Gathering receipts and records for taxes. | 3 |
| Total | 46 |
April to July take more than half the year’s hours. In a year when the same tenant stays, those four months shrink to a few hours, and the total drops to around 22.
What a manager would charge for the same year
Take a manager who charges 8 percent of the rent collected and one month’s rent to place a new tenant. With two weeks empty in July, the house collects about $32,200 in rent, so the year costs about $2,576 in monthly fees plus $2,800 for the leasing fee, or $5,376 in all. In a year without a new tenant, it’s about $2,700.
Divide by the hours, and the manager costs about $117 an hour in the busy year and about $122 an hour in the quiet one. What a property manager costs goes through the other fees to ask about, which can move these numbers.
Two things bring the real cost down. Management fees are generally a deductible rental expense, on Form T776 in Canada and on Schedule E in the US, so the after-tax cost depends on your tax rate. And a manager who fills the home sooner pays for part of their fee. At $2,800 a month, each week empty costs about $650 in rent.
What the hours don’t show
The table counts time, but some of the year’s costs aren’t about time.
The furnace in February didn’t wait for a convenient hour. If you can’t take a call on a Saturday night, or you’re away when it comes, someone else has to.
Distance adds up quickly. Every inspection, showing and repair visit in the table assumes you’re nearby. With two hours of driving each way, twelve showings in May become dozens of hours on the road unless you can group them together.
Rules carry their own risk. Notices, deposits and rent increases each have rules where the home is, and a mistake can cost more than a year of fees if it ends up at the landlord tribunal or in court.
When doing it yourself makes sense
Managing your own rental can be a good choice. It usually is when you live close to the home, your tenant is settled and likely to stay, you can handle small repairs or know someone who can, and you enjoy it or don’t mind it. In that case, the quiet year’s 22 hours may be time you’re happy to spend.
It’s usually worth paying a manager when you live far away, when tenants change often, when you can’t be on call, or when your time is worth more to you than what the manager costs per hour, after tax.
A middle option
If the busy months are the problem, you don’t have to choose all or nothing. Many managers offer tenant placement on its own. For a one-time fee, often similar to their leasing fee, they price and advertise the home, run the showings, screen applicants and sign the lease, and you take it from there. In the year above, that would have covered about 20 of the 46 hours.
You can also start that way and hand over the rest later if the quiet months turn out to be less quiet than you hoped.
If you’d rather hand it over
If you’re thinking about a manager for your rental, we can help.
Tuze makes the software property managers use to run their business, from leasing and rent to AI teammates that answer renters and residents in minutes, at any hour. For a single home, that means a furnace call on a Saturday night gets answered, and renters hear back while they’re still interested.
Through Find a property manager, we’ll introduce you to a trusted manager near you who runs on Tuze.