Managing a property from far away

[Christopher Edwards]

I have a few single family homes in another state, about 1000 miles from where I live. I used to live in the same city and taking care of them was easy then. There isn't much to do when the houses are rented and I average a two year stay for most tenants. I have a licensed property manager who visits the places monthly and takes photos for me and shows them when empty. He is on-call for emergencies too. He doesn't charge much as we have agreed that I will take care of most things.

My biggest problem is finding people to fix up the places after a tenant vacates. It seems impossible to find decent handymen and try to communicate over the phone what I want done.

This property manager I use doesn't have a very good list of resources but he does a good job of walking the properties monthly and letting me know of any issues.

I don't want to hire a full-fledged manager since I like being involved and I don't like paying such high fees when they basically would only really work hard when there is a vacancy which can take a year or more sometimes to happen.

What do others in this situation suggest? Are there services that fix-up rentals when they are vacant? I've talked to a few contractors but mostly they don't want to get involved in small projects like touching up paint and cleaning and gardening and all. I can't even seem to find a painting contractor who is interested unless they completely paint everything and since I get good tenants usually, there is rarely a need to cover every surface each time with new paint. Plus my homes are mostly quite old so I don't want to keep building up layers of paint.

Right now, I have a 3000 square foot house that is 100 years old and needs sprinklers installed, some shrubs planted, cleaning throughout, touch up paint only where it needs doing, snaking out drain lines, fixing some broken windows, etc. etc.

What I'd like is to have one person I could call who would instinctively know how to fix-up a vacant rental to make it look like it did when it was last vacant. I shouldn't have to fly there each time there is a vacancy just to show someone which walls need painting and which ones don't. I had no trouble doing those things myself when I lived nearby so I'm surprised I can't find someone to hire that could do the same thing.

Thanks for any suggestions.