What to See at the First Consultation: Sample Agreement, Statement and Plan

Before any money changes hands, a property manager should put three documents in front of you: a sample management agreement, a sample monthly owner statement and a written plan for your house. If you leave the first meeting without all three, you have not been given enough to make a decision, no matter how pleasant the conversation was.

This guide covers what each document should contain, what else belongs on the table, and what a manager should never ask of you at a first meeting. Treat it as the checklist you bring to the consultation.

The three documents to ask for by name

Ask for them before the meeting so the manager arrives prepared. A company that manages rentals every day has all three ready; the only reason not to share them is that the fees or the reporting would not survive a close read.

• A sample management agreement. The actual contract form, blank, with the fee schedule attached. Not a brochure, not a one-page summary.
• A sample owner statement. A real monthly statement from a managed property with the owner's details blacked out, so you see the exact line items you will receive each month.
• A written plan for your house. One or two pages, specific to your address: a rent range with the comparables behind it, the make-ready work they recommend, how they will market it, and a target date for a signed lease.

Everything else you learn at the consultation hangs on these three. The agreement tells you what you are buying, the statement tells you how you will see your money, and the plan tells you whether they have looked at your property or just at your rent check.

Yes, you can see the agreement before paying anything, and here is what to read in it

Any manager who asks for a setup fee or a signature before showing you the full agreement is asking you to buy blind. The agreement is a standard form; sharing it costs them nothing. Take it home and read it at the kitchen table, not across a desk with someone waiting.

Read these parts first:

• The fee schedule, with every fee listed in one place: management fee, leasing fee, renewal fee, maintenance coordination, inspection charges, setup, cancellation, and what happens to the fee when the house is vacant.
• Term and termination: how long you are committed, how much notice ends it, and whether a termination fee applies if you sell or move back in.
• Maintenance authority: the dollar amount the manager may spend on a repair without calling you, and what counts as an emergency that overrides that limit.
• The reserve: how much of your money they hold back, and where it sits.
• Security deposits: whether the manager or you hold them, and in what kind of account.
• Broker identification: the name and license number of the broker responsible for the agreement.

A fuller clause-by-clause reading is in what to look for in a property management agreement. At the consultation stage, the goal is simpler: confirm the agreement exists, is complete, and matches what you were told out loud. Perpetual publishes its fee structure on the pricing and fees page and puts the same numbers in the written quote, so there is nothing to reconcile later.

The sample owner statement, and why to see it before you sign

The owner statement is the document you will read more than any other for as long as the manager works for you. Seeing a real one before signing tells you two things: how transparent the accounting is, and whether you will be able to understand it without calling the office.

A redacted statement from a managed property is the right thing to ask for. A mock-up built for sales purposes always looks clean. A real one shows you how a repair invoice appears, how the management fee is calculated and labeled, how a partial rent payment is handled, and how the reserve is tracked from month to month.

On the sample, look for:

• Rent received, with the date it was received, not just the amount due.
• Each fee as its own line with a plain label, never bundled into a single "management" figure.
• Repair charges with the vendor name and a reference to an invoice you could open.
• The beginning and ending reserve balance.
• The amount disbursed to the owner and the date it was sent.

If the manager cannot produce a sample, or offers only a screenshot of a dashboard, ask why. How to read an owner statement walks through every line once you have one in hand. At the consultation, the point is to confirm that the statement is something you could hand to your CPA without explanation.

The written plan for your house

This is the document most companies skip, and it is the one that separates a manager who has thought about your property from one running a script. It should be specific to your address and arrive in writing, even if it is only a page.

A useful plan has four parts:

1. A rent range with the reasoning. Which nearby leased homes were compared, how yours differs, and where in the range they recommend listing. Perpetual produces this as a free rental analysis before any agreement is signed.
2. A make-ready list. What they would do before listing and what they would leave alone, ordered by what affects rent and leasing speed.
3. A marketing outline. Where the listing goes, who takes the photos, how showings are handled, and what a prospective tenant must meet to be approved.
4. A timeline. From agreement to listing, listing to signed lease, and lease to first disbursement, with the assumptions stated.

You are not holding the manager to the timeline as a guarantee. You are checking whether they can lay out the sequence at all, and whether the numbers in the rent range came from actual leased comparables rather than an asking-price search.

What else belongs on the table at a first consultation

Beyond the three documents, a complete first meeting covers a short list of facts that are easy to verify and hard to fake.

• The broker's license. Property management for others in Texas requires a real estate license, and the broker's name and license number should be offered without being asked. How to verify a Texas license takes a few minutes.
• Proof of insurance: general liability and errors and omissions, with the carrier named.
• The written screening criteria applied to every applicant, which is also what protects you under fair housing law.
• The lease form they use and whether it is a Texas-specific form reviewed by an attorney.
• How maintenance requests are received, who dispatches them, and how vendors are chosen and paid.
• How and when you reach a person, and how you reach the broker if the person is not enough.

None of this requires the manager to reveal anything proprietary. It requires that they run a normal, documented operation and are willing to show it.

What a manager should never ask for at a first meeting

The consultation is where the manager earns the right to be hired. A few requests at this stage tell you the relationship will be one-sided.

• Money. No deposit, no reserve, no setup fee until you have signed an agreement you have read in full.
• A signature on the spot. A legitimate agreement is the same document tomorrow as it is today.
• Keys or access codes before an agreement exists.
• Your mortgage statement, bank login or tax return. A manager needs to know whether a mortgage exists and whether the property is in an entity; the details come later, in writing, if at all.
• A commitment to their preferred contractor for the make-ready before you have seen a scope and a price.

Pressure at the first meeting is itself an answer. The company that lets you take the documents home is the one that expects them to hold up. More signs to watch for are in property management red flags.

What to bring so the plan can be specific

The quality of the written plan depends on what the manager knows about your house. Bring, or send ahead, whatever you have from this list:

• The current lease if a tenant is in place, and the last rent ledger.
• HOA rules, including any leasing restrictions or registration requirement.
• The insurance declarations page, so the manager can tell you whether it is a landlord policy or still a homeowner policy.
• Ages of the roof, water heater and HVAC, and any warranty paperwork.
• A list of what you know is wrong with the house, however small.
• Your target date for having it rented, and any plans to sell or move back in within the next few years.

With that in hand, the rent range gets tighter, the make-ready list gets shorter and more accurate, and the timeline becomes something you can hold the manager to.

How to judge what you were shown

After the meeting, lay the three documents side by side and check them against each other. The fee schedule in the agreement should match the fees quoted out loud and the fees that appear on the sample statement. The rent range in the plan should be consistent with the comparables they described. The timeline should be realistic for the make-ready list.

Then ask yourself three plain questions. Could you explain this agreement to a friend? Could you read this statement without calling the office? Does the plan describe your house, or any house? If the answer to all three is yes, you have a manager worth a second conversation. If you are comparing several companies, the same three documents from each make the comparison fair, and a simple scorecard with the same rows for each company keeps the comparison honest.

How Perpetual handles this

At Perpetual, the first consultation starts with the house, not the pitch. I look at the property, pull leased comparables from Keller, North Richland Hills, Fort Worth or wherever it sits, and send a written rental analysis with the rent range and the make-ready items I would actually recommend. That is the plan, and it is free.

Alongside it you get the full management agreement with every fee listed in writing, the same numbers published on our pricing page, and a redacted owner statement from a managed property so you can see exactly how your money will be reported each month. The owner portal holds the same statements, inspection reports and invoices once you are a client.

I am the broker, so the person you meet is the person responsible for the agreement. Take the documents home, read them, and call when you have questions. Nothing is signed and nothing is paid at the first meeting.

The takeaway: If a manager cannot show you the agreement, a real statement and a plan for your house before you pay, they have not earned the signature.

Questions owners ask

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