Newbie here– is my property manager taking advantage of me?

[Josiah Tullis]

I recently decided to take the plunge and bought an out-of-state SFH rental investment through Roofstock. The existing lease expired about a month after we closed and the tenant did not renew the lease. I decided to keep the existing property management in place as they were one of Roofstock's preferred partners. The existing lease ended Jul 31st 2019 and I emailed the property manager on August 3rd to ask about getting a turn bid over to me. They informed me that they were having a hard time getting a contractor in but had walked the property ad ensured it's vacnacy and would get me a bid as soon as possible. I continued to request this bid every several days for a few days, growing increasingly frustrated. About three weeks after the lease had ended I was informed that the manager on my account was no longer with the company and I'd be reassigned. The new manager seems more responsive, but it still took until August 16th 2019 to get the turn bid– a full 6 weeks after the tenant vacated. Finally having the bid I'm now seeing that the carpets need to be replaced as they smell like dog urine. Of course this costs a lot more than the security deposit but when I looked through the lease to see what recourse I might have I also saw that the tenant needs to be notified of any damage within 45 days of move-out or have their deposit returned. I am wondering if my property manager may have screwed this up since it has now taken 46 days before I even had a report of the damage.

I have been incredibly patient with this group and am in the middle of negotiating their waiving the leasing fee to place a new tenant. I'm wondering now if I should continue to push forward or cut my losses and find a new property management group.

For context, the property is outside Indianapolis, IN. Does anyone know a capable PM in the area?

[Luke Carl]

@Josiah Tullis It’s time to get on a plane. You have no idea if it needs new carpet. You don’t even want carpet you want LVP. Does it need paint? Fixtures? A front door? You have no clue. You’ve got to get there and lay eye on it.

I would put it on Facebook marketplace and schedule an open house for when you’re there and find your own tenant. It’s easy. And you’ll end up with much better tenant.

Throw a touch pad deadbolt on the front door so you can get workers in there whenever you need them. Put a ring floodlight on the front porch in case you need to keep an eye on things.

Systems systems systems. It’ll be 2 days worth of work before you arrive and 3 days worth of work when you do arrive. 5 days to create systems so these problems never happen again.

And the best part..... all the lessons you’ll learn so you can plug the next property into your systems.

Typed on iPhone