Home365 property management at Atlanta

[Jason Li]

Hey investors, I'm looking for a property manager at Atlanta, found home365 https://www.home365.co/, they charge a flat fee per month and claim they take care of everything, for me the quote is about 13% of my monthly rent. I don't find too many reviews tho, wondering if anyone has worked with them at Atlanta? Appreciate your inputs!

[Curt Smith]

I was hanging back re this thread.  :)   I see a PM, Hannah, offered some nice helps!  Which nudged me to offer my own from the property owner side who self manages 34 doors, 1 door with a PM, which oddly is this home365 new francise.  I signed up with a small PM focusing on the South side of Atlanta.  I have one door in Griffin GA that I put on this PM, which was bougth or merged or turned into home365.   I'm not going to comment on this PM specificially.  I don't believe I have enough doors with a PM to comment specifically re home365.

My general comments re PMs are;

- Its not surprising to hear me offer that not all PMs are equal.   I'm in a network of high experience investors and about 5 in my network manage 700 to a few 1000 doors each.   So I hear from their side.  I have one door with a PM so know a small foot print owner side.

- Reports reports reports, portal portal portal!!!!!    Small fry PMs don't have good monthly reports showing $$ deposited to your account, maintainence, and other expenses..   A portal allows you to see in real time whats going on, tenant payment history etc.

This does not mean that the real small PMs are out, you may get mpore personalized service from a small PM, vs someone managing 2k doors.

- How often do they do a home inspection?  Quarterly?  Do they really inspect or just say they do?   FWIW I do not personally inspect my 34 self managed doors and take a calculated risk.  But If I'm paying 10% I want the properties inspected!!!

- Based on me typing this I checked into the home365 portal and poked around.  Its potentially all there but its missing the rent roll data, or maybe its being built out little by little.  The rent roll tab had no data.  I did see a maintenance request from the tenant, a big tree branch fell and knocked off some gutter.   LOL LOL Then.... the PM apparently sent someone out to fix the gutter and carry off the tree limb.  Nice pictures and a video presunmably sent in by the tenants.  They charged me $1350 for that work.  Thats typical mark-up and profit by the PM.   BTW my friends in that experts group tell of a million tactics to make money off tenants that the owner does not get.  Fees fees fees and maintenance mark up.  ...   BTW this is normal and I sort of agree with it since I know its hard to make enough off just 10% of rent and turn overs to make PMing (and all the hassel and trouble dealing with tenants) all worth it.  I see both sides, having talked to and been side by side with expert PMs.  And me with just 1 door on a PM.  :>

Theres surprising low profit in PMing and a hard job.  IE if wasn't hard why would owners turn their rentals over to someone else???

The good news;   the PM fixed this tree/gutter problem fast.  The bad news;  they did not involve me in spending $1350 of MY money.   On the flip side;  if you manage 1k doors it would double the work if everthing had to be run through the owners....  ;(    I emailed the Broker (in PM land the licenced Broker is the boss or near the boss) asking to be consulted re all >$300 maint items and important tenant interactions (whats the terminatioon fee?  Is this house for sale? blabla).

=== Bed bugs

Sooo, I never had a problem with bed bugs in my own business of self managed doors.  But,,,,  I did the turn over rehab of the Griffin house I turned over to this PM.  I did not know it had a dormant investation of bed bugs from the privious tenants (slobs is kind).   An experienced PM has a contractor for every problem.   I would have had a very very bad few months if I didn't have this particular PM managing the tenants, the pest control levels.  They ended up solving a bad investatioon with a spraying tactic by an expert pest co, one I didn't know of, but the PM did.  Whew!!!

Bottom line;   an experienced PM with a good portal, monthly reports, good contractors can be a huge value.   And you pay for this.   Its no help, but statistics are that Atlanta is the most expensive PM MSA in the country.   I am surprised at 13% but what is turn over costs?   1 month or 1/2 month?

I hear of as low as 8% and BTW these fees can be negotiated.  They aren't if you are just putting one door on the PM, but many doors, high rents, you can ask abouit negotiating the fees.   There's too much to cover really on this topic.   Hannah helped, I rambled with a bunch more, best of luck.