See what your property should rent for and what management would cost.
Bay Property Management Group charges four fees. The monthly management fee typically falls between 5% and 8% of collected rent, with a full range of 3% to 10% depending on how many units you have with us, where the property is located, and the monthly rent amount. Leasing a vacant unit costs one month’s rent, charged only after the tenant moves in. Lease renewals range from $299 to 25% of one month’s rent depending on jurisdiction. Getting started costs a one-time $99 onboarding fee. Where a city or county requires a rental license or use and occupancy permit, that cost is $199.
Our monthly management fee typically falls between 5% and 8% of collected rent across all four markets, with a full range of 3% to 10%. Rates in this region vary more than a national average suggests, because licensing, inspection, and renewal requirements differ substantially between Baltimore City, Washington DC, the Northern Virginia counties, and Philadelphia. A quoted percentage is only meaningful when you also know what it covers and what gets billed separately — a lower headline rate with maintenance markups and vacancy fees attached often costs more over a year.
Collected. We charge the management fee on rent we actually collect, not on rent that’s due on paper. If a tenant doesn’t pay in a given month, there’s no management fee on that unit for that month.
This distinction matters more than it sounds. A fee charged on rent due means you’re paying your manager during exactly the months you aren’t getting paid yourself — and it removes the manager’s financial urgency about collection. Charging on collected rent keeps the incentive aligned: we get paid when you get paid. When you’re comparing managers, ask which basis they use. Many won’t volunteer it.
No. If your unit is vacant, no rent is collected, so there’s no management fee that month. Some managers charge a flat monthly minimum whether or not the property is occupied — we don’t.
You’ll pay the tenant placement fee once a tenant has been placed and has moved in, but nothing during the marketing period itself. Our average time on market is 23 days, so the vacancy window is usually short — but either way, you aren’t paying us to sit through it.
After the tenant moves in. The tenant placement fee is one month’s rent, and it’s charged once the tenant takes possession — not when you sign a management agreement with us, and not while we’re marketing the unit. If we don’t place a tenant, you don’t pay a placement fee.
The fee covers marketing across the MLS, Zillow, HotPads and other major rental platforms, conducting showings, and screening every applicant for prior evictions, judgments, liens, bankruptcies, criminal history, sex offender registry, and creditworthiness. Income verification is required on every applicant, with no exceptions.
No. You pay the invoiced cost of the work. We don’t add a percentage on top of third-party repair bills.
Maintenance markups are one of the most common places where a low advertised management percentage gets recovered elsewhere. A manager quoting 6% with a 15% markup on every repair can easily cost more across a year than one quoting 8% at cost. It’s worth asking this question of anyone you’re considering.
It depends on when you leave. Ending the agreement at the end of its term costs nothing beyond fees already earned, provided you give written notice at least 60 days before the end date.
Ending it mid-term means paying the management fee for the months remaining in the term, calculated on the rent in effect at that point — the same applies if you sell the property mid-term. If we’ve already secured an approved applicant and you terminate before move-in, the charge is $1,500 or one month’s rent, whichever is greater.
Section 11 of the management agreement sets out the full terms, including how the calculation works for a vacant property.
The $99 onboarding fee is charged once and covers setting up your owner account, the initial property assessment, and coordinating the paperwork and service arrangements needed to bring the property under management. If the property is already tenanted, it also covers collecting and reviewing the existing lease, transferring the security deposit, and introducing ourselves to the current tenant.
It’s the only fee charged before a tenant is in place. Everything else on our fee schedule is triggered by something happening — a tenant moving in, a lease renewing, rent being collected.
Because renewal requirements aren’t the same everywhere we operate. In some jurisdictions, renewing a lease triggers a re-inspection, re-registration of the rental license, or specific notice procedures with statutory timelines. In others, a renewal is close to a document signature. The fee — $299 to 25% of one month’s rent — reflects what the renewal actually involves where your property sits.
A renewal is nearly always cheaper than a turnover. Our renewal rate is 79%, which means most of our owners avoid a placement fee and a vacancy period in any given year.
Yes. Portfolio size is one of three factors that determine where you land in our 3% to 10% range, along with the property’s location and the monthly rent amount. Owners with more units under management with us pay a lower percentage.
If you’re weighing whether to bring a second or third property over, ask for a quote on the portfolio rather than assuming the rate on your first property carries across. It often doesn’t, and the difference compounds monthly.
Generally, yes. Property management fees are typically treated as a deductible operating expense on a rental property, alongside related costs like leasing fees, maintenance, and repairs. For most individual owners these are reported on Schedule E.
How that applies to you depends on how the property is held, whether it’s classified as a rental or partly personal-use, and your broader tax picture, so confirm the specifics with your own CPA or tax professional. We send monthly statements showing income and expenses for each property, plus a year-end 1099, which is what your accountant will ask for.
The monthly management fee covers day-to-day management: rent collection, maintenance coordination, 24/7 emergency response, tenant communication, monthly and annual financial statements, and move-in and move-out inspection reports.
Billed separately are tenant placement when a unit needs to be leased, the lease renewal fee when a tenant stays, the one-time $99 onboarding fee, and rental licensing or use and occupancy permits where a jurisdiction requires one. Repair and maintenance costs are property expenses rather than management fees.
See our full property management services for the complete scope.
A property management fee is what a property owner pays a management company to handle the day-to-day work of running a rental from collecting rent, coordinating maintenance, and communicating with tenants. Bay Property Management Group charges this as a percentage of rent actually collected, not a flat amount, so the fee moves with your rental income. Here’s the exact breakdown:
| Fee | Amount | When it's charged |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly management fee | 5–8% of collected rent (range: 3–10%) | Monthly, only when rent is collected |
| Tenant placement fee | One month's rent | Once, after the tenant moves in — never upfront |
| Lease renewal fee | $299 to 25% of one month's rent | At each lease renewal, varies by state |
| Onboarding fee | $99, one time | At account setup |
| Rental license / U&O permit | $199 where required | Only in jurisdictions that require one |
Prices and fees are subject to change. Your exact rate is confirmed in writing before you sign anything.
Reviewed by: Patrick Freeze | President of Bay Property Management Group
Fees vary by portfolio size, location, and rent.
Bay Property Management Group charges four fees: a monthly management fee that typically falls between 5% and 8% of collected rent, a tenant placement fee of one month’s rent charged only after a tenant moves in, a lease renewal fee ranging from $299 to 25% of one month’s rent depending on jurisdiction, and a one-time $99 onboarding fee. Where a city or county requires a rental license or use & occupancy permit, that cost is $199.
Four fees and no 20-page contract required to figure out what you’ll pay.
Most owners pay between 5% and 8% of rent collected each month. The full range runs from 3% to 10%, and where you land depends on three things: how many units you have with us, where the property is located, and the monthly rent amount.
Owners with larger portfolios pay a lower percentage. A single-family rental in one market and a twelve-unit building in another will not carry the same rate, and we’d rather quote you accurately than advertise one number that applies to almost nobody.
The fee is charged on rent collected, not rent due. If the property sits vacant, or a tenant doesn’t pay, there is no management fee that month.
When we lease a vacant unit, the placement fee is one month’s rent. It is charged after the tenant takes possession – not when you sign with us, and not while we’re marketing the property.
That timing is deliberate. You pay for a placed tenant, not for the effort of looking for one. If we don’t fill the unit, you don’t pay a placement fee.
The fee covers marketing across the MLS, Zillow, Hotpads and other major rental platforms, showings, and full applicant screening in keeping with local, state and federal laws, as well as income verification.
When a tenant renews, the renewal fee ranges from $299 to 25% of one month’s rent, depending on the state and jurisdiction the property is in.
The range exists because renewal requirements are not the same everywhere we operate. Some jurisdictions require re-inspection, re-registration, or specific notice procedures at renewal; others don’t. The fee reflects what the renewal actually involves where your property sits.
Getting started costs $99, charged once. It covers setting up your owner account, the initial property assessment, and coordinating the paperwork and service arrangements needed to bring the property under management.
This is the only fee charged before a tenant is in place.
Some cities and counties require a rental license or a use & occupancy permit before a property can legally be rented. Where that applies, obtaining or renewing it incurs a $199 fee.
We’re listing this separately rather than burying it, because it isn’t a management fee – it’s a jurisdictional requirement we handle on your behalf where one exists. If your property is in an area that doesn’t require a license, you won’t see this cost.
Whether your property needs one depends on the city and county it’s in.
Vacancy Fees – no monthly charge while a unit sits empty.
Maintenance Markups – you pay the vendor’s invoice, not a percentage on top.
Eviction Service Fees – you only pay for the court filing fees associated with eviction filings.
Advertising or Marketing Fees – marketing is covered by the tenant placement fee.
Statement, technology, or portal fees.
We believe having only four fees makes things very easy and transparent for our customers and clients. You do not have to read through a 20-page contract to understand what fees you will and will not be charged.
Prices and fees are subject to change at any time.
Consider a single-family rental similar to our current Philadelphia listings that rents for $2,000 a month, is managed for a full year, and involves one tenant placement with no renewal.
| Onboarding fee (one time) | $99 |
| Monthly management at 7% ($140 × 12) | $1,680 |
| Tenant placement (one month's rent) | $2,000 |
| Rental license, if required | $199 |
| First-year total | $3,978 |
We manage roughly 8,000 units across Maryland, Washington DC, Northern Virginia, and Pennsylvania. The fee structure is identical in every market — the same management percentage, the same placement fee, the same onboarding fee. What changes is local compliance: whether your jurisdiction requires a rental license at all, what a lease renewal actually involves, and how much paperwork sits between you and a legally rented property. Here’s what that looks like market by market.
Baltimore City requires a rental license before you can legally collect rent, and Maryland law is clear that an unlicensed landlord can’t, and getting licensed means passing an inspection by a City-registered inspector, and properties built before 1978 need current lead certification as well, and property registration and the license itself renew on separate schedules, which is one of the most common things owners lose track of.
This is a market where the $199 licensing cost applies to most properties, and where a lease renewal can trigger re-registration rather than a signature, which is why renewals here sit toward the upper end of our range, and Baltimore County operates a separate program with its own rules, so the requirements change depending on which side of the city line your property sits on.
We handle the registration, the inspection scheduling, and the lead certification as part of managing a rental in Baltimore.
DC requires a Basic Business License with a rental housing endorsement, which runs on a two-year cycle and requires passing a Department of Buildings inspection, and separately, every rental unit has to be registered with the Rental Accommodations Division through the DC Rent Registry, including units that are exempt from rent stabilization.
Owners routinely assume the business license covers the registration, and it doesn’t, and they’re two filings with two different agencies, and missing the second one can hold up a license renewal.
The $199 licensing cost applies here, and DC also has the most involved renewal process of our markets, because rent stabilization rules and the District’s tenant protections shape what a renewal can and can’t change, which is reflected in where the renewal fee lands for property management in Washington DC.
Northern Virginia is the least expensive of our markets on compliance, and it’s worth understanding why before you compare quotes across state lines, and Virginia has no statewide rental license requirement, so most owners here never see the $199 licensing cost at all.
What applies instead varies by jurisdiction, and Arlington County requires a business license once annual rental income passes $10,000, and Alexandria requires one for owners operating as a business, and Fairfax County generally exempts single-family rentals while requiring a rental dwelling license for larger buildings, and none of these are property-condition licenses, they’re tax registrations, which is a different and usually cheaper thing.
Renewals are also simpler here, without the re-inspection or re-registration steps other markets add, so renewal fees sit at the lower end of our range, and our Northern Virginia team can tell you which of these applies to your specific property.
Philadelphia requires an annual rental license from the Department of Licenses and Inspections, plus a Commercial Activity License, and to get either, you need to be current on city taxes and clear of open L&I violations.
Every new tenancy also requires a Certificate of Rental Suitability, issued within 60 days of move-in and given to the tenant, and properties built before 1978 need lead-safe or lead-free certification, which expires and has to be renewed, and without a valid license and certificate, a Philadelphia landlord can’t enforce the lease or file for eviction.
The $199 licensing cost applies here, and because the rental license renews every year and a fresh suitability certificate is typically issued at renewal, Philadelphia is our most paperwork-heavy market, and that’s what the renewal fee reflects in the Philadelphia rental market.
Managing property in Austin or San Antonio? Our Texas fees and rates are listed at texasbmg.com/fees-rates.
We don’t just say we’re competitive — here’s how our published rates compare to nationwide benchmarks.
| Fee | Bay Property Management Group | Industry Average |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly management fee | 5–8% of collected rent (range: 3–10%) | 8–12% of monthly rent; 10% is the most commonly cited benchmark |
| Tenant placement fee | One month's rent | 50–100% of one month's rent |
| Lease renewal fee | $299 to 25% of one month's rent, varies by state | $200 to $500 per renewal, typically a flat fee |
Source: DoorLoop, “Property Management Fees by State,” published February 2026. Industry figures vary by market and portfolio size; lease renewal comparison is directional since flat-fee and percentage-based structures aren’t perfectly apples-to-apples.