Kendall Creek Properties charges 10% of the monthly rent we collect on your Austin rental, plus 75% of one month’s rent as a leasing fee when we place a new tenant. No tech fees. No maintenance markups. No surprise line items at the end of the year. That is the whole pricing sheet (yes really, lets keep this honest from the start).
So if you own a $2,500 a month rental in Austin, our management fee is $250 a month and our leasing fee in a turnover year is $1,875. Total annual cost in a year you turn the property is roughly $4,875. In a year with no turnover, it is $3,000. Thats the number you can plug into your spreadsheet right now.
I am Ed, the broker / owner of Kendall Creek Properties (and also the broker-owner of Neuhaus Realty Group, a residential sales brokerage that has been working Austin since 2007). I have been doing this long enough to know that owners shopping for a PM company want one thing on page one: the price. Most PM websites bury it. We are not going to.
How Kendall Creek’s fees compare to the Austin market
The Austin PM market is reasonably well-defined on price. Most full-service companies sit between 8% and 10% of monthly rent, with leasing or tenant placement fees typically running 50% to 100% of the first month’s rent. We sit at the top of the monthly range (10%) and in the middle of the leasing range (75%).
Why not 8%? Because the cheap monthly fee is almost always made up somewhere else. The companies advertising 7% or 8% are usually charging a maintenance markup, a monthly tech fee, a vacancy fee, a lease renewal fee, an inspection upcharge, or all of the above. When you add it up over a year, the 7% guy often costs more than the 10% guy. Not always. But often.
We picked 10% with clean add-ons because thats the version of this business that doesnt make me feel weird at year-end when I send you your 1099. If we did the maintenance markup thing, every plumbing bill becomes a small conflict of interest. So we just dont do it.
The leasing fee at 75% lands where it does because thats roughly what it costs us to do the leasing job right. Photos, MLS listing, syndication to the major rental sites, showings, applicant screening, lease drafting, move-in inspection, deposit collection. If a PM is offering this for 25% or 50%, ask them which of those steps they are skipping. (Usually it is the screening. We will get back to that.)
Walking through the math on a real Austin rental
Lets use a $2,500 a month single-family rental, which is right around the median for a 3-bed home in most non-luxury Austin submarkets in 2026.
Monthly cost
- 10% of $2,500 = $250 per month
- Annual management fee = $3,000
Leasing cost (turnover year)
- 75% of one month’s rent = $1,875
- Charged once when we place a new tenant
Total annual cost
- No-turnover year: $3,000
- Turnover year: $4,875
A few things to note. First, the leasing fee only hits when we actually place a tenant. If your existing tenant renews, there is no leasing fee that year. Second, both the management fee and the leasing fee are 100% tax-deductible as ordinary and necessary rental expenses on your Schedule E. So if you are in the 24% federal bracket, your real cost on that $4,875 turnover year is closer to $3,700 after taxes. Not nothing. But not $4,875 either.
Third, the median Austin tenant in our portfolio stays roughly 18 to 22 months. That means in a typical 4-year ownership cycle you are paying for the leasing fee about twice. Your average annual carrying cost on the management side ends up around $3,900 in real dollars per year (before the tax deduction).
That is the math. Compare it to your own numbers and decide if it pencils.
What you actually get for the fee
This is the part most fee pages skip. Here is what the management fee covers, in plain English:
- Tenant screening and placement. Credit, income verification, eviction history, criminal background. We pull all of it before anyone signs a lease. Bad screening is the single most expensive mistake an owner can make (more on that here).
- Lease execution. TAR / TAA-compliant Texas residential lease, signed electronically, with all the required disclosures (lead paint, flood, parking, etc).
- Rent collection. Tenants pay through our portal. Funds get deposited to your account on a predictable monthly schedule. You get a statement.
- Maintenance coordination. Tenant calls us when the AC dies in July. We dispatch a vendor. You get a notification. No markup on the invoice. You pay what the vendor charged.
- Eviction handling. If we have to file, we coordinate with the JP court and the attorney. Eviction filing fees and any attorney costs are yours, but the coordination is ours.
- Annual inspections. We walk the property at least once a year and send you a report with photos.
- Monthly statements and year-end 1099. Your accountant gets clean numbers. You dont have to chase down receipts in April.
- Texas statute compliance. Notices, deposit returns within the 30 day window per Texas Property Code Section 92.103, entry notice requirements, all of it. If you self-manage and miss one of these deadlines, the statute lets a tenant recover triple damages plus attorney fees. Thats a $900 deposit becoming a $3,000 court loss right.
If you want the deeper walk-through of what an Austin PM actually does day to day, we wrote that up separately: hiring a property manager in Austin.
Fees other Austin PM companies charge that we dont
This is where the comparison gets interesting. When you are shopping PM contracts, look for these line items. Every one of them is common in Austin PM agreements, and none of them are in ours.
Maintenance markup. Some companies add 10% to 20% on top of every vendor invoice. A $500 plumbing job becomes a $575 invoice to you. Over a year on a single property that easily runs $300 to $800 in pure markup. (And it creates a perverse incentive for the PM to use the most expensive vendors right.)
“Technology” or “platform” fees. $5 to $25 a month per property for using the PM’s portal. We use Buildium and we just pay for it ourselves. Its a normal cost of doing business.
Vacancy fees. Some companies charge a reduced monthly fee even when the property is vacant, on the theory that they are still “managing” the listing. We dont charge anything during a vacancy. If we are not collecting rent, you are not paying us.
Lease renewal fees. Some companies charge 10% to 30% of one month’s rent every time the existing tenant renews. We dont. If the tenant renews, you get a no-cost year on the leasing side. That is the right outcome for everyone (the tenant stayed, the property stayed full, and nobody had to spend money to make that happen).
Inspection upcharges. A handful of companies charge $75 to $150 per inspection. Ours are included.
Marketing fees. Photos, MLS listing, syndication. Sometimes broken out as a separate $200 to $500 setup fee. We bundle this into the leasing fee.
Set-up / onboarding fees. First-month “activation” charges of $250 to $500 to bring your property onto the platform. We dont have one. The first month is the same fee as every other month.
Read your prospective PM agreement looking for these line items specifically. If three or four of them are in there, the headline percentage doesnt actually tell you what you are going to pay.
When Kendall Creek Properties is not the right fit
This is the part where I am supposed to tell you we are perfect for everyone. We are not.
Sub-$1,200 monthly rents. We handle these case-by-case. The honest math is that 10% of $1,000 is $100 a month, and our cost to actually deliver the service well (vendor coordination, screening, accounting, statute compliance, the occasional emergency) is roughly the same whether the rent is $1,000 or $3,000. At $1,000 rents the math gets tight for both of us. If you have a portfolio of lower-rent units it might still work; we will look at it. But if you have one $900 a month unit we probably are not the right home for it.
Owners who want to be in the day-to-day. Some owners want to approve every vendor estimate, review every applicant, and call the tenant directly about late rent. Thats a totally legitimate way to own rentals. But it is also self-management with extra steps, and you would be paying us for permission to do work yourself. We work best with owners who want the property handled and want to see the monthly statement, not run the operation.
Short-term rental / Airbnb owners. We do long-term residential rentals only. If you are running an Austin STR, our friends at StaySTRA cover that world properly.
Owners shopping purely on price. If you are going to pick the cheapest PM in Austin, that is your call. But you will almost certainly find someone at 7% or 8% who charges enough in add-ons to come out higher than us anyway, and the screening will probably be worse. Cheap PM is expensive PM in disguise more often than not.
Out-of-Austin properties. We work the Austin metro (Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop). If your rental is in Dallas or Houston we dont have the local vendor network to do the job right, and we will tell you that on the first call.
If any of those is your situation, we will say so and point you to someone who fits better. That is also part of the job.
A note on transparency
A lot of property management is asymmetric information. The PM knows everything about your property and your tenant; you know what shows up on the monthly statement. Thats the structural problem in this industry, and the fix is not a fancy app. The fix is just being honest about what gets charged and why.
So our pricing page is exactly the same as this blog post: 10%, 75%, no markups, no platform fees, no vacancy fees. If you ask for a contract, that is what the contract says. (If we ever sneak in a fee that is not on this list, you should fire us.)
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Kendall Creek Properties charge to manage a rental in Austin?
10% of the monthly rent we collect, plus 75% of one month’s rent as a leasing fee when we place a new tenant. No maintenance markups, no technology fees, no vacancy fees, no lease renewal fees.
Is the leasing fee charged every year?
No. The leasing fee only applies when we place a new tenant. If your existing tenant renews, there is no leasing fee that year. The median tenant in our portfolio stays 18 to 22 months, so most owners pay the leasing fee about every other year.
Are property management fees tax-deductible in Texas?
Yes. Both the monthly management fee and the leasing fee are 100% deductible as ordinary rental expenses on Schedule E. See our post on Texas rental property tax deductions for the full list.
Does Kendall Creek charge a markup on maintenance work?
No. You pay the vendor invoice at exactly what the vendor charged us. We do not add a percentage, a coordination fee, or any other markup. If the plumber charges $400, you pay $400.
What is the Austin market rate for property management fees?
Most Austin PM companies charge 8% to 10% of monthly rent and 50% to 100% of one month’s rent for leasing. We sit at 10% monthly and 75% leasing, which is in the middle to upper end of market, with a notably cleaner add-on structure.
Do you manage properties with rent below $1,200 a month?
Case-by-case. The math is tough at low rents because our cost to deliver the service is roughly constant. We will look at it, but at very low rents we may recommend self-management or another fit. Either way we will tell you straight.
Can I cancel the agreement if it is not working out?
Yes. Our management agreement has a clean exit clause. We do not believe in trapping owners in multi-year contracts. If we are not doing the job, you should not be paying us to keep doing it.
Do you handle Austin short-term rentals or Airbnb properties?
No. Kendall Creek Properties does long-term residential rentals only. STR is a different operation entirely.
Want to see if we are a fit?
If you have an Austin rental and you want a 15-minute conversation about whether we make sense for your situation, reach out through our contact page. No sales pitch, no high-pressure follow-up, no signup form. Just a phone call where we look at your property, your numbers, and your goals, and tell you honestly whether we are the right home for it.
If we are not, we will say so and point you somewhere better.
If you want to see what we have on the leasing side right now (useful for benchmarking your own rent), our available rentals page is kept current. And if you are still weighing the bigger question of self-managing versus hiring a PM in Austin, thats the place to start.
Either way. Pricing should not be a mystery. Now you have ours.