Austin Property Management —
Better Tenants. Faster Placement. Full Protection.

The Austin property management industry standard is 8–10% of monthly rent. On a $2,200/mo Austin rental, that's $176–$220/mo ($2,112–$2,640/yr) — just in management fees, before any placement or renewal costs. Flat Fee Landlord charges a flat fee starting at $139/mo, regardless of your rent. No percentage fees. Renewal fees vary by plan (Basic $500, Preferred $450, Concierge renewal included). Your management cost stays the same whether your property rents for $1,800 in Pflugerville or $3,200 in Round Rock.

Yes. Every lease we draft complies with the Texas Property Code (Chapter 92), including the 30-day security deposit return requirement, lead paint disclosure rules (required for all pre-1978 properties), move-in/move-out inspection reports, and Travis County and Williamson County-specific rental requirements. Texas landlord-tenant law gives landlords broad protections — we enforce them correctly so you don't face costly disputes.

Our Austin metro average is 13 days from listing to signed lease. High-demand areas like Round Rock and Georgetown often lease in under two weeks due to steady corporate relocation and tech industry demand. Our 21-day placement guarantee means we have a direct financial incentive to move quickly.

We cover Travis County (Austin, Kyle, Buda, Dripping Springs, Bee Cave, Manor) and Williamson County (Round Rock, Cedar Park, Pflugerville, Leander, Lakeway, Georgetown, Hutto) — plus surrounding communities throughout the Greater Austin metro.

Texas evictions take 30–60 days on average — significantly faster than Maryland (45–60 days) or Virginia (8–12 weeks). The process requires a 3-day notice to quit, a Justice Court filing, a 10-day waiting period, and a move-out date. We handle the entire process — notices, court filings, judgment execution, and tenant coordination — so you never navigate Travis County Justice Court alone. Eviction coordination is a bundle benefit on our Preferred and Concierge plans (annual billing, when Tenant Placement + Property Management are purchased together) for tenants we placed. Filing fees, court costs, attorney fees, and constable invoices pass through to the owner at cost. Basic plans don't include eviction coordination; it's available as a separate $750 Manager-fee engagement.

Travis County has become aggressive with property tax increases — median residential assessments are up 8–12% annually over the past three years. Rising taxes are eating into your cash flow faster than rent increases. Filing the Travis Central Appraisal District protest is the property owner’s responsibility — we don’t file protests or assemble protest packages on your behalf. Owners file directly through the TCAD online portal or engage a specialist firm on a contingency fee; if you ask, we’ll surface the rent-roll and comparable-rent data from our system that you may want to use in your own protest preparation.

Austin's strict STR crackdown has reduced inventory for short-term use, which increased demand for long-term rentals in core neighborhoods. Outside the STR-restricted zone (East Austin, Central Austin), some landlords still try STRs — often illegally. We keep your lease secure by enforcing no-subletting clauses and screening out investors looking to flip your property into an Airbnb. Long-term rental protection is built into every lease.

Austin rents have exploded — $1,800–$3,200/mo across our coverage area, with corporate tech relocation driving demand. At 8–10%, that translates to $144–$320/mo in management fees. The percentage model penalizes Austin landlords because your rents are so high and growing so fast. Our flat fee means you keep more of the rent in a high-growth market — the savings compound faster in Austin than almost any other market we serve.

Yes — all four are core coverage areas. Pflugerville and Leander lease in 10–14 days on average with rents from $1,750–$2,400/mo, driven by tech commuters and family relocations. Kyle and Buda (southern Hays County, south of Austin) lease in 14–18 days with rents from $1,650–$2,200/mo, with demand from Dell, Tesla Gigafactory Texas, and the South Austin job corridor. Each submarket has distinct tenant profiles — we tailor marketing (listing platforms, photography style, pricing strategy) to match.

The Austin metro has cooled from the 2021–2022 spike, with rent growth normalizing to 2–4% year over year in 2026. Ring suburbs (Round Rock, Georgetown, Leander, Pflugerville) continue to outpace the urban core because housing supply in Austin proper has absorbed post-pandemic demand while suburban job growth (Apple in Austin-Round Rock, Samsung in Taylor, Tesla in Del Valle) keeps pulling tenants outward. Expect the strongest rent appreciation in Williamson County through 2026 — our flat fee protects your upside as rents rise.

The Texas homestead exemption reduces property taxes only on a property that is your primary residence — it does not apply to rentals. If you move out of a property you previously homesteaded and convert it to a rental, you must notify the appraisal district and lose the exemption. This often means a 15–25% tax increase in the first rental year, which most new landlords miss. We flag this during onboarding so it doesn't surprise you at the first tax bill.

Yes — and with Austin's STR restrictions tightening, many owners are making the switch. We handle the transition end to end: re-pricing for long-term comps (STR nightly revenue rarely translates 1:1 to monthly rent), refreshing the listing for family/professional tenants instead of travelers, removing STR furniture if desired, and drafting a lease that locks in 12-month occupancy. Most STR-to-LTR conversions we manage lease within 18 days, with stronger net cash flow than the STR produced after cleaning, platform fees, and vacancy.

Perfect 10ant System™ is Flat Fee Landlord's 10-point tenant screening process — the operational moat behind our under-1% eviction rate across 2,000+ placements. Every applicant on every Flat Fee Landlord listing is verified across ten dimensions: credit, criminal background, eviction history, income, employment, prior rental history, ID verification, sex-offender registry, address history, and fraud check. We pull each data source independently, look at the patterns across them rather than scoring each in isolation, and reject any application that fails our minimum threshold — even when the property has been on market longer than we'd like. The fee model removes the perverse incentive: because we charge a flat monthly fee not a percentage of rent, we have nothing to gain from rushing a marginal placement. The 10ant System is the difference between "they pass the credit check" and "they're going to take care of the property and pay the rent on time for the full lease term."

Flat Fee Landlord charges a flat monthly management fee, not a percentage of rent. Three plans on annual billing: Basic at $139/mo (the core essentials — rent collection, owner and tenant portals, maintenance coordination, lease enforcement, 24/7 emergency line), Preferred at $179/mo (the most popular choice — adds annual tax filing, home warranty admin, mid-lease inspection with photos, annual strategy review with rent and sales comps, 24-hour callback response time, plus the 9-month Tenant Assurance and eviction coordination as bundle benefits when Tenant Placement is purchased together), and Concierge at $349/mo (everything in Preferred plus renewals included, two inspections per year, twice-yearly strategy review, multi-year lease coordination included, plus the 12-month Tenant Assurance). Tenant placement is priced separately at one month's rent plus a $350 listing & activation fee — billed once per placement. Industry-typical percentage management runs 8–12% of monthly rent: on a $2,800/mo single-family rental that's $224–$336/mo, scaling up automatically every time the rent goes up. Our flat fee never increases with rent. Use our quote builder at flatfeelandlord.com/get-a-quote for exact pricing on your property.