The Maintenance Myth:
Setting the Record Straight
on How McCaw Actually Works
“A competitor recently published a blog post making specific financial claims about McCaw Property Management. Some of those claims are inaccurate. Here is the truth — from someone who built this company from the ground up and has invested in these same markets for over two decades.”
Kyle McCaw, Founder & CEO, McCaw Property Management, April 2026
I don’t usually respond to competitor marketing. In 23 years of running McCaw Property Management, I’ve watched firms come and go. Good ones. Great ones. Some that didn’t make it. My philosophy has always been simple: the best response to competition is to do better work and let the results speak.
But a blog post published recently by a Fort Worth property management firm makes specific, verifiable claims about how McCaw handles maintenance — and some of those claims are factually wrong. When inaccurate information is indexed and ranking in Google, it reaches property owners who deserve to make decisions based on facts. So here are the facts.
The claim they made
Their claim — repeated four times in the article
“McCaw documents a 20% markup on all maintenance and repairs. That means a $1,000 HVAC repair costs you $1,200. A $3,000 roof repair costs you $3,600.”
This is presented as documented fact. It is not accurate. McCaw Property Management does not charge a 20% markup on maintenance invoices passed to property owners. What we actually do is far more involved — and far more expensive for us to operate — than simply sending a work order to a vendor and collecting a percentage.
We built our own maintenance team. Here’s why.
Years ago, we made a decision that most property management companies avoid because it’s genuinely difficult. Rather than relying exclusively on third-party contractors, we invested in building an in-house maintenance operation — a team of our own employed technicians who handle the majority of work orders across our portfolio, supplemented by vetted third-party specialists when a specific job requires it.
What McCaw actually does
McCaw employs in-house maintenance technicians as our primary maintenance solution. We own the vehicles. We carry the insurance. We manage the payroll, the tools, the scheduling, and the materials.
When a work order comes in, our team is the first call — not a third-party vendor operating on their own schedule. We bring in outside specialists when the scope of work genuinely requires it, but our own people lead.
The reason is straightforward. Third-party vendors in this market are often unreliable — not because they’re bad at their trade, but because they’re running their own businesses with their own priorities. A property management company that sends a work order into the void and waits has surrendered control over one of the most important variables in protecting a rental property.
I’ve seen what that looks like from the owner’s side. A tenant reports a slow leak. The work order goes out. The vendor doesn’t respond for four days. By day seven, you have water damage that turned a $150 fix into a $4,000 remediation. The management company collects their fee either way. The owner absorbs the loss.
“Maintenance is the hardest part of this business to do right. That’s exactly why we decided to own it — not outsource it.”
Kyle McCaw, Founder & CEO, McCaw Property Management
Our model gives us control over prioritization, response time, and quality. When it’s our employee on the job, we own the outcome. No finger-pointing between management company and vendor when something isn’t done right. The accountability stops with us — and that’s exactly how we want it.
What in-house maintenance actually costs us
I want to be completely transparent about something that might surprise people: our in-house maintenance operation is not a profit center for McCaw Property Management. It covers overhead — vehicles, insurance, payroll, benefits, tools, materials, and the administrative cost of running a crew across a large service area. On a pure financial analysis, it would be more profitable to outsource everything to third parties and collect a coordination fee.
We don’t do it because it’s profitable. We do it because it produces better outcomes for the properties we manage and the owners who trust us with their investments. That’s the calculation Kyle McCaw made as an investor — because he owns properties in the same markets we manage. He built the maintenance model he’d want running on his own portfolio.
A competitor framing our maintenance model as a hidden revenue stream has it exactly backwards.
Why we cover all of DFW — not just one corner of it
The article also suggests that geographic breadth is a liability — implying a firm managing properties across 50+ DFW cities can’t deliver focused service. I’d respectfully push back on that.
This is 2026. Geographic coverage is a function of people, logistics, and technology — not office proximity. Our technicians work across our full service footprint. Our property managers use technology to coordinate, communicate, and report in real time from anywhere in the metroplex. Kyle personally invests in every market we cover. We understand these neighborhoods because we operate in them as investors, not just as managers looking at them from a map.
More importantly: our clients are real estate investors. Many of them own properties in multiple DFW submarkets. They don’t want to manage three separate relationships with three different management companies across the metroplex. They want one team, one portal, one monthly statement, and one phone number. That’s what McCaw provides.
01
Speed of response
Our in-house team prioritizes work orders by urgency on our schedule — not a vendor’s availability. A burst pipe at 9 PM doesn’t wait until a contractor has an opening.
02
Accountability
When our employee does the work, we own the outcome. No ambiguity about who’s responsible when a repair needs to be done right.
03
Investor-first thinking
Kyle McCaw is a DFW real estate investor. He built the maintenance model he’d want on his own properties — not the easiest model to operate.
04
Full portfolio coverage
One relationship manages your entire DFW portfolio, regardless of which cities your properties sit in. Consistent systems, one reporting platform.
On Google reviews — some necessary context
The article points to Google review volume as a primary quality indicator. This deserves honest context from someone who’s been in this industry for 23 years.
The reality of reviews in property management
McCaw manages a significant number of rentals across DFW. At that scale, we enforce lease terms firmly and consistently — late rent, property damage, lease violations, application denials. Tenants who are held accountable frequently leave retaliatory one-star reviews.
It happens in every market, with every firm that actually enforces leases.
A property management company that avoids difficult enforcement conversations will accumulate fewer negative reviews — and deliver worse outcomes for the property owners paying them to protect their investment. We do the hard things so our clients don’t have to. Sometimes that costs us stars from tenants who owe back rent. We’re at peace with that tradeoff.
The metric that actually measures management quality
Google reviews measure tenant satisfaction. That’s useful context — but it’s not an operational audit. PropertyManagement.com’s TrueMatch™ assessment measures something more meaningful: actual management performance — financial reporting accuracy, communication standards, maintenance response, compliance, and owner outcomes.
Both McCaw and the firm that wrote this article were independently audited by PropertyManagement.com. Here is what that audit found:
PropertyManagement.com TrueMatch™ — independent operational audit
McCaw Property Management
95.5%
TrueMatch™ score
Westrom Group
87.9%
TrueMatch™ score
Westrom scored 87.9% — genuinely strong performance that reflects a well-run operation. McCaw scored 95.5% — the highest TrueMatch™ score ever awarded on the platform.
McCaw ranked #7 in the entire United States
I want to be fair here: Westrom Group is a good company. An 87.9% independent audit score reflects genuine competence and real commitment to their clients. Fort Worth landlords with a single home near their office are likely well-served by them. I mean that sincerely.
But McCaw earned a 95.5% — the highest score in the history of that platform — and a national ranking of #7 out of every property management company in the United States. That’s not a local award from a marketing directory. That’s an independent operational audit conducted by the same third party that audited them.
If you want to know how a property management company actually performs — not how many tenants gave them a thumbs up — that’s the number that matters.
The bottom line
A competitor claimed McCaw charges a 20% markup on all maintenance. That’s not true. We built and employ an in-house maintenance team — our primary resource for work orders across our portfolio — because third-party vendors alone don’t meet the standard our clients’ properties deserve. We supplement with outside specialists when the work calls for it. We carry the overhead, absorb the complexity, and accept that this model costs more to operate than simply outsourcing everything. We do it because it produces better results.
We’ve been doing this since 2003. Through the 2008 crash. Through COVID. Through every rate cycle and market shift North Texas has seen in two decades. We’ve been named to the Aggie 100 five times. We earned the highest independent management audit score ever recorded on the industry’s leading platform. We’re ranked #7 in the United States.
We didn’t get there by taking shortcuts on maintenance. We got there by doing the hard things — consistently, for over two decades — so the landlords who trust us with their investments don’t have to.
If you’re comparing property management companies in DFW, compare the audited numbers. Compare the track record. Compare what each firm actually does when a water heater fails at 11 PM on a Saturday — and who picks up the phone.