Investing in Bay City MI

[Jake Toth]

New investor here, Last fall i purchased a duplex on the south side of Bay City Michigan about an hour from my residence. I hired a property manager to manage it for me as i am trying to invest passively as i have a fairly busy job as a project manager for a mid sized excavation company. The duplex sat empty until about march of this year when the manager gave me feedback that the showers in both units needed to be done as people had concerns about them due to not having surrounds, poor layout etc. so we spent around 3500 to get both showers/ bath fans done. finally one side of the duplex was rented in late april. We ended up buying a single family 4 bed 2 bath home on the north end of town in early may as we had been saving and i wanted to keep the ball rolling on investing and i was also trying to trust the system hoping that my manager would be able to get the other duplex unit rented as well as the single family. well here we are in late june and both are still vacant. I am wondering if there are any other investors in bay city that are having issues filling their units? 

We are 7 months into our investing journey with little to no income to speak of from our properties and it is getting very frustrating to keep floating them along month after month out of our own pockets.

we are using a company called ASAM to manage our rentals and they do not seem to advertise very well so i am also wondering if there are other management companies in the Saginaw/ Bay City area that people have had luck with?