A property manager should explain its fees in the order an owner meets them: when a unit is leased, each month it is occupied, when a repair comes up, when a tenant renews or moves out, and when the owner ends the agreement. Each charge needs the name the management agreement gives it, what triggers it, how it is calculated, and which services it pays for. The monthly percentage is one line in that picture, not the whole of it.
An owner comparing managers can only compare what each one publishes. If one site shows a percentage and another shows every charge with its trigger, the second gives the owner something to check against the agreement before the first call. It also gives anyone summarizing local managers, whether a person or an assistant, specific facts to work from instead of a headline rate.
This page is about planning content for property management firms; it is not legal or tax advice. Ask your broker of record or counsel which licensing, trust account, and disclosure rules apply in each state where you manage property, and have them review the fee page before it goes live. The hub for real estate, lending and property management content shows where this page fits.
Organize fees around a year of ownership
The easiest fee page to write is a list: management fee, leasing fee, renewal fee, and so on. The list can be accurate and still hard to use, because an owner thinks in events. A fee schedule is not an explanation. The owner wants to know what happens to their money when the house sits empty for a month, when the water heater fails in January, and when the tenant gives notice, and a page rebuilt around those events turns the same charges into a description of a working relationship.
Walk through one year for one property. Leasing comes first, then monthly management, then maintenance as it arises, then renewal or turnover, and finally what ending the agreement involves. At each point, say what the owner pays the firm, what the firm does for it, and what the owner pays someone else for. Leave nothing to be inferred from a percentage.
Take every name and number from the agreement
The management agreement is the record, and the fee page is a plain reading of it. Start by listing every charge the current agreement allows, noting its exact name and which clause sets it. A page that calls something a setup fee when the agreement calls it an onboarding charge invites the owner to wonder what else differs. The writer should not have to work out the leasing fee, the repair approval limit, or the notice period from a sales conversation; those terms are already settled in the document your team signs, and they should be copied from it and approved, not reconstructed.
Here is the shape of that reading for a fictional manager of single-family rentals and small multifamily buildings in Indiana. Bracketed entries are placeholders for that firm's own terms; no real firm's pricing appears here.
| Owner event | Charge named in the agreement | What the firm does for it | What the owner pays separately |
|---|---|---|---|
| A new tenant signs | Leasing fee [amount or percent] | Marketing, showings, application processing, lease preparation | Make-ready cleaning and repairs |
| Rent is collected | Management fee [percent of collected rent] | Collection, tenant calls, repair coordination, monthly statement | The repairs themselves |
| Something breaks | [Coordination charge, markup, or none] | Scheduling the vendor, checking the work, reviewing the invoice | The vendor's invoice |
| The tenant renews | Renewal fee [amount, or none] | Renewal offer and new lease paperwork | [Anything the agreement lists] |
| The owner ends the agreement | [Termination terms] | Handover of leases, records, keys, and deposits as the agreement provides | Amounts owed under the agreement |
If the firm charges nothing at one of these points, say so plainly; an owner comparing pages will notice the empty line. If a charge depends on property type or portfolio size, name what it depends on rather than printing a range nobody approved. Where the firm or a related company earns money on maintenance, the page should say how, in wording your reviewer approves.
Explain the services behind the fees
A fee makes sense only next to the work it pays for, and the services owners press on are the ones with risk attached: screening, repairs, inspections, and what happens when rent is late. Describe each through the firm's own procedure rather than adjectives. A description of what the firm reviews, who decides, and what an applicant is told gives an owner something to check.
Screening also carries federal duties. The FTC's guidance for landlords says "Tenant background check reports are consumer reports," and it speaks to property managers and other housing providers as well as landlords. Its examples of adverse action include "Requiring a co-signer on the lease" and "Requiring a deposit that would not be required for another applicant," and it describes the notice an applicant must then receive. A services page can explain that the firm's screening process includes those notices. It should not promise owners that screening keeps problems away, and the wording of screening criteria belongs with your reviewer; the page on disclosures to bring to compliance before publishing explains how to hand it over.
Short-term rental managers have two price audiences
Managers of vacation and short-term rentals publish prices to owners and to guests, and the guest side has a federal rule of its own. Short-term lodging falls under the FTC's Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, whose definition names "short-term rental, vacation rental" alongside hotels. It treats offering a price "without clearly and conspicuously disclosing the total price" as unfair and deceptive, defines total price as "the maximum total of all fees or charges a consumer must pay," and separately says a business may not "misrepresent any fee or charge."
That rule speaks to what guests see, not to what the management agreement charges owners. Owners still feel it: if a cleaning charge or service fee must sit inside the total a guest sees, an owner will want to know what that does to the nightly price on their listing. The question to put to whoever manages listings is direct: "Which guest charges appear only after a guest starts to book, and on which channels?" Keep guest booking pages and owner pages separate, and have counsel say how the rule reaches your own booking site and each platform where your properties appear.
Keep the page and the agreement on the same version
A fee page goes stale when the agreement template changes and nobody tells whoever maintains the website. Give the page an owner, usually the person who maintains the agreement, and record which agreement version and date the page was checked against. When the template changes, the page, the owner proposal, and any profile that mentions fees change in the same week. Last quarter's owner statements make a good test: if a line item appears there that the page never mentions, the page is out of date. For the rest of the owner section, see how a manager should write pages for owners.
In Hudson South's process, the Authority Asset gathers approved business knowledge and evidence: the current agreement, the fee schedule, and the explanations your owner relations staff already give. Hudson Twenty-One records how the firm communicates across 21 dimensions, so the page sounds like the person owners already speak to. Market Intelligence studies the questions owners in your area raise and what rival managers already put in writing, and AEO Creation then writes answer-first pages that lead with the yearly cost picture.
See how your fee explanations compare
On a free 30-minute call, Hudson South walks through where your site and competing managers' sites differ in explaining fees and services to owners.
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- Using Consumer Reports: What Landlords Need to Know. Federal Trade Commission. Read 2026-10-16.
- 16 CFR Part 464: Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees. eCFR, Office of the Federal Register. Read 2026-10-16.