The PM company built by an owner who wouldn't trust one.
Brian bought his first Richmond investment property in 2001 and got his real estate license in 2004. For the next thirteen years, he self-managed every property he owned — because he never found a property management company he'd trust with one of them.
That's not a small statement. Self-managing rentals while running a real estate practice meant taking maintenance calls at midnight, walking properties between client showings, screening residents personally, and learning the operational side of the business from every angle — as the licensee, the owner, the screener, the leasing agent, the bookkeeper, the inspector, all of it.
By 2014, the gap between how Brian managed his own properties and how every Richmond PM company managed theirs was wide enough that he founded a company to fill it. The guiding principle from day one: build the property management company Brian Hall would actually hire to manage his own properties.
For the first seven years, The RVA Group operated quietly — refining systems, building processes, and earning a track record. In 2021, the company began actively promoting management services to outside owners. Today we manage over 200 homes across the Richmond metro for 120+ owners — and that founding principle still shapes every decision. When we publish our fees on the website. When we audit a property the day it comes under management. When we capture video and photo move-in records. When we keep an in-house handyman on staff. Every one of these decisions starts with the same question: what would I want, if this were my property?
The proof is in the places owners rarely look.
Most property management companies are built around a question that sounds reasonable but isn't: how do we make this profitable? The honest answer in this industry tends to involve quiet revenue streams — markups, retained fees, programs that benefit the manager more than the owner. Owners rarely see them, which is the point. The RVA Group is built around a different question: what would I want, if this were my property? Two places that question changes the answer:
Late fees pass through to the owner. 100% of them.
Most PM companies keep late fees. Read enough management agreements and you'll find this in plain language — "collected and retained by the manager." It's standard. It's also a quietly misaligned incentive: when a resident pays late, the manager benefits. Brian wouldn't hire a manager whose revenue improves when his resident misses a payment. So the company doesn't keep late fees. They go to the owner. The fee exists to protect the owner's cash flow, not the company's.
No markup on maintenance.
When a vendor invoices for a repair, the owner pays what the vendor charges — no margin built into the invoice, no "coordination fee" baked into the cost. The exception is renovation project management: if The RVA Group is overseeing a renovation over $10,000, there's an 18% fee for the oversight, scoped and disclosed in advance. That's work that deserves to be paid for. Routine maintenance and turnovers don't.
These aren't marketing decisions. They're the same decisions Brian makes about his own properties — applied to every property the company manages.
