Self-Managing Rental Properties: A Realistic Guide for 2026

I've self-managed 12 rental units since 2022. No property manager. No staff. Just me, a Google Sheet, and my phone.

Some months it's easy. Some months it's chaos. Here's an honest guide to what self-managing actually looks like in 2026.

Who Should Self-Manage

You should self-manage if you have the time, the temperament, and the proximity. Let me break those down.

Time. Managing 10 units takes about 5-10 hours per week. Some weeks it's 2 hours. Some weeks it's 15. If you have a demanding full-time job and a family, those 15-hour weeks are brutal. I wrote a whole guide on being a part-time landlord if that's you.

Temperament. You need to be okay with midnight texts about leaky toilets. You need to stay calm when a tenant gives you a sob story about rent. You need to be organized enough to track 10 different things at once.

Proximity. If your properties are more than 30 minutes from where you live, self-managing gets hard. You can't do drive-bys. Emergency response is slow. Vendor coordination is tougher.

The Three Things You Must Track

After 4 years, I've boiled self-management down to three things that matter.

1. Rent collection. Know who paid. Know who didn't. Know on day 1, not day 10.

2. Maintenance. Log every request. Track every repair. Don't let anything sit for more than a week without progress.

3. Lease management. Know when leases expire. Start renewal conversations 60-90 days out. A lease expiration tracker with auto-reminders helps. An unexpected vacancy at lease end is expensive.

Everything else is secondary. If you're on top of these three, you're doing fine.

The Tools I Actually Use

I keep it simple. Google Sheets for data. My phone for communication. A basic folder system for documents.

My rent tracking sheet has one tab per month with every unit, every due date, and every payment status. Takes 2 minutes to update when a payment comes in.

My maintenance sheet logs every request with priority, status, and vendor. I check it weekly. Or at least I try to.

Lease documents live in Google Drive. One folder per unit. Lease, move-in photos, any correspondence worth saving.

Total software cost: $15/month for RentGuard monitoring. Everything else is free.

The Common Mistakes

Not catching late payments fast enough. This is the number one mistake I see. If you catch a late payment on day 1, it's a quick conversation. Day 10, it's a collection project.

Not tracking maintenance in one place. Requests come in through texts, calls, and emails. If you don't log them in one place immediately, you will forget one. Guaranteed.

Underpricing rent. Check comparable rents at least once a year. I was $100/month below market on one unit for 18 months before I realized. That's $1,800 I left on the table.

Avoiding hard conversations. Late rent, lease violations, rent increases. These conversations are uncomfortable. But avoiding them costs more than having them.

When Self-Managing Gets Overwhelming

There will be months where everything goes wrong at once. Three maintenance requests, a late payment, and a tenant giving notice. All in the same week.

When that happens, the instinct is to think "I need to hire a property manager." Maybe. But probably not. You probably just need better systems. I wrote about how many units you actually need before hiring a PM.

The difference between a stressed self-manager and a calm one isn't talent. It's systems. A good tracking system means you know exactly what needs attention today. Nothing surprises you.

My Biggest Piece of Advice

Don't wait for a problem to build a system. Set up your tracking on day one. Get alerts working before you need them. The best time to fix a leaky roof is when it's sunny.

I built RentGuard because my "system" was checking a spreadsheet when I remembered to. Now it checks for me and tells me when something needs my attention. That one change made self-management feel manageable again.

If you're self-managing and want a safety net for your spreadsheet, check out descoshop.com. Free forever.