
Property Management Fees: What Are You Actually Paying For?
If you are researching property management fees, you have probably already seen the numbers. Management fees typically range from 6% to 10% of monthly rent, with 8% being the industry midpoint for single-family homes and condos in Southern California. But what do those numbers actually mean in practice? What work is behind each fee, and how do you know if you are getting real value or just paying for a name on a contract? In this article, we break down each fee in a typical property management agreement, explain what the work behind it actually looks like, and cover a part of the process most landlords overlook entirely: insurance.