Running a Florida rental from another state

What a management company actually does for 8% to 12%

Four things, and only one of them is collecting rent.

• Tenant placement, usually charged separately at half a month’s rent to a full month. Screening is the part that matters: credit, income, prior landlord and eviction history.
• Rent collection and accounting, with monthly statements and a year-end summary for your tax return.
• Maintenance coordination — their vendor list, their response, your invoice. Ask what the approval threshold is before they call you.
• Compliance: the lease, the deposit handling, the notices. Florida has specific rules on security deposits and on how notice is given, and getting them wrong costs more than the fee.

The Florida-specific costs a remote owner underestimates

Three, and they are all larger here than where you are coming from.

1. Insurance. A landlord policy on a Florida rental is not what you pay on your own home in the north-east, and it renews upward. Budget the renewal, not the first year.
2. Property tax with no homestead exemption, and a 10% annual assessment cap instead of 3%. Over a decade of holding, that gap compounds into a materially different bill from the owner-occupier next door.
3. Air conditioning. It runs most of the year, it fails, and it is not a small repair. Set aside for a replacement rather than treating it as a surprise.

Self-managing from a distance

It is possible, and it works until the first emergency.

If you go this route, have three things arranged before the tenant moves in: a plumber, an air conditioning contractor and a handyman who will each take a call from a number they do not recognise and invoice you afterwards. Without that list, a Saturday failure becomes a week, and a week becomes a tenant who does not renew.

The maths is straightforward: management at 10% of a $2,600 rent is $3,120 a year. One badly handled vacancy — two months empty plus re-letting — costs more than that.