We do a fair bit of the work ourselves. As time goes by, and our experience grows, we're capable of doing more of it ourselves.
Then again, if the money starts rolling in, I might prefer to put my time into doing another real estate deal instead of renovating it myself... :)
We manage the individual contractors ourselves.
We found the individual contractors thru a variety of methods:
1) Experience with having repairs done on our own house before we got into the rental business. That took care of:
a) roofer,
b) gutter installation (same as roofer) (we can do both of those, but my hunny has osteoporosis (sp?) and I don't like working high up.)
c) tree cutter
2) Asked our realtor. That took care of:
a) plumber (her brother, and thus motivated to do a good job on sister's behalf),
b) general handyman
c) electrician (not quite so happy with this one, will only use for simpler stuff once we find another more skilled one)
3) Asked our friends. That took care of:
a) hvac,
b) home inspector
4) Observation. I noticed a local handyman or teenager. That took care of:
a) yard work.
b) outside painting.
The rest were trial and error. Where possible we test them out on smaller jobs and treat them well.