Property Management Advice

[David Pittman]

Good afternoon BP!

Me and my wife are looking at leaving the country for a year and then possibly moving out of the country permanently. We have a custom SFH that I built in 2021 (I am a custom home builder).So I have all the contractors I need to maintain the property. We built the house to live in and then sell, but our plans have changed. So it was not built to be a rental house per say. These are a few questions I have:

1.) Will a property manager work with the contractors I used to build the house? I'm not worried about the cleaners or the law guys, I'm thinking about the big ticket items (mechanicals, roof). We still use all the same mechanical contractors and would like to use the vendors I know.

2.) Is it worth getting a PM for just one house? Placement is my biggest concern with doing it myself and the fact that we will be in different time zones is the other. I would be concerned that there would be an issue that I couldn't address, like the AC going out in August/September. 

3.) IF anybody had any recommendations for a PM that is in the Galveston county area, we would love to hear them. The reviews for PM's that I have found so far are pretty bad and we've all heard the horror stories of bad PM.

We want to keep the house because we have family close (as they age we would be very close) and if something happens to us oversees we will at least have a house in the states to come to. The plan would be to rent the house for at least the first 2 years, then make a decision about keeping the house or not.

Thank you guys for any help!

[Jim Berman]

Quote from @Dillan Cooper:

Quote from @David Pittman:

Good afternoon BP!

Me and my wife are looking at leaving the country for a year and then possibly moving out of the country permanently. We have a custom SFH that I built in 2021 (I am a custom home builder).So I have all the contractors I need to maintain the property. We built the house to live in and then sell, but our plans have changed. So it was not built to be a rental house per say. These are a few questions I have:

1.) Will a property manager work with the contractors I used to build the house? I'm not worried about the cleaners or the law guys, I'm thinking about the big ticket items (mechanicals, roof). We still use all the same mechanical contractors and would like to use the vendors I know.

2.) Is it worth getting a PM for just one house? Placement is my biggest concern with doing it myself and the fact that we will be in different time zones is the other. I would be concerned that there would be an issue that I couldn't address, like the AC going out in August/September. 

3.) IF anybody had any recommendations for a PM that is in the Galveston county area, we would love to hear them. The reviews for PM's that I have found so far are pretty bad and we've all heard the horror stories of bad PM.

We want to keep the house because we have family close (as they age we would be very close) and if something happens to us oversees we will at least have a house in the states to come to. The plan would be to rent the house for at least the first 2 years, then make a decision about keeping the house or not.

Thank you guys for any help!

Hi David,

It sounds like you’ve built an amazing home! For property management, I’d recommend reaching out to Jim Berman on BiggerPockets. He’s done a ton of successful work managing properties in Houston and can give great advice on using your contractors, managing a single property, and making sure everything runs smoothly while you’re overseas.

He’s a great resource to connect with!

@Jim Berman

 @Dillan Cooper thank you so much for the kind words, I really appreciate you tagging me in on this one.

@David Pittman, I'd be more than happy to go over your questions with you and discuss your needs. I'll PM you to share contact info.

best,

Jim