Managing Your Rentals Yourself vs Hiring an Agent

A managing agent typically takes a percentage of collected rent. Whether that is expensive depends entirely on what you would otherwise be doing with the hours, and on how far you live from the property.

Most of the advice on this question is written by agents. Here is the version that includes the cases where you should not hire one.

At a glance

3 to managing it yourself, 4 to hiring a managing agent. Counted from the rows below, and the count is not the decision.

Direct cost
Managing it yourself
No commission.
Hiring a managing agent
A percentage of collected rent, plus possible letting fees.
Your time
Managing it yourself
Viewings, calls, repairs, chasing. Mostly at inconvenient hours.
Hiring a managing agent
Largely removed.
Filling a vacancy
Managing it yourself
You advertise and screen. Void periods are yours.
Hiring a managing agent
They have a pipeline and an incentive to fill it.
Knowing your own property
Managing it yourself
Complete. You see it, you know the tenants.
Hiring a managing agent
Second-hand, through reports.
Handling a difficult tenant
Managing it yourself
Personal, and harder for it.
Hiring a managing agent
Professional distance, and they have done it before.
Repairs
Managing it yourself
Your contacts, your prices, your chasing.
Hiring a managing agent
Their contractors: convenient, occasionally marked up.
If you live far away or abroad
Managing it yourself
Barely workable.
Hiring a managing agent
The reason agents exist.
Risk of money going astray
Managing it yourself
None but your own.
Hiring a managing agent
Real, and entirely dependent on the agent's accounting.

Choose managing it yourself if

You live close by and have the time and temperament for it.
You have a small number of units in one place.
Your tenants are long-standing and the work is genuinely light.
The commission is a large share of a thin margin.

Choose hiring a managing agent if

You live far from the property, or outside the country.
You have units in several places.
You have a job that will not survive tenant calls at eight in the evening.
You find the confrontational parts hard and have been avoiding them. An avoided arrears conversation costs more than any commission.
You are scaling and the administration has stopped fitting into evenings.

The honest answer

Self-manage if you are nearby, small, and the work genuinely fits your life. The commission is real money and there is nothing clever about paying it for a job you were doing well anyway.

Hire an agent when distance, scale, or your own tolerance for the unpleasant parts has made self-management worse than nominal. The most expensive landlords are not the ones paying commission; they are the ones who self-manage badly. A vacancy left unadvertised for two months, or arrears allowed to reach five figures because nobody enjoys that phone call, costs far more than a year of fees.

If you do appoint one, the thing to scrutinise is not the rate. It is the statement. Ask to see a real one before signing: rent collected by unit, expenses itemised, commission shown as a calculation, net remitted. An agent who cannot produce that on request is the risk, whatever they charge.