All Forum Posts by: Alex Thomsen

@Drew Sygit Thank you for your suggestion. Yes, I already brought some of the issues up with the PM and she seems to be quite defensive and comes up with excuses. I will speak to the higher management and see if there is something that can be done or change the company. 

I am sure there are many good managers out there - however, I find it a bit difficult to find them. I recently tried a company for my house in Greensboro NC that really seemed professional, organized, and I had a great interaction/interview with the local business manager. However, after this thinks quickly went downhill as they only cared about fixing really minor things in the house and did not seem to have any interest in renting it out. 

@Theresa Harris Thanks for your suggestions. I am reaching out to the previous PM and if nothing productive comes out of this I will look for a different company.

I definitely agree that 3 months vacancy is too much - I usually say max 2 months, but since I thought we had found tenants one month ago who turned out to bail on us, I thought I would give the PM some more time. However, it is now clear that she is not capable.  

@John Underwood Thank you so much for your suggestions. The manager has the property listed on Zillow (and many other similar sites) and I can see that it has quite a bit of interest there, which makes me wonder why she can't rent it out. Once in a while she tells me about a non-qualified application when I ask so I guess we are getting some applications. However, she is not doing any open houses as far as I know - is this normal for a rental?

I just reached out to the previous manager, so lets see what he says.

Your turn around seems really great - do you happen to know a property management company in Charlotte NC that can deliver similar results? That would really be great.

Hello fellow investors! I'm a fairly new buy & hold investor with 3 SFH properties in NC under my belt. I'm writing because I need some advice on what to do with one of my property managers who manages two of my properties. The company who this person works for has managed these two properties for the past 2-3 years fairly well. However, my past manager moved up in ranks within the company last summer and this new manager was the replacement. Initially, I had a quite good impression of her as she is communicating well and quite attentive to my requests, but as time has moved on, I am getting mixed feelings about her abilities to manage the properties. My first red flag was when one of my tenants kept paying rent really late, and seemed to fool the manager on several occasions. The tenant would promise the manager to pay on a certain late date and then never pay that day - my manager would then try to evict her whereafter the tenant would ride it out and pay just before she got evicted. This happened several times, and a few times I told the manager that we should not trust the tenant. My manager would always come up with some excuse for trusting the tenant such as she talked to the tenant personally etc. In any case, I was basically fine as long as I got paid at some point, and the plan is to not renew the contract with the tenant (the contract expires in the summer).

The part that have got me more worried is that the tenant of my second house moved out more than 3 months ago and the manager haven't been able to rent the property out to new tenants yet. This property is a newer house in a decent neighborhood and has previously been rented out quite fast. In the beginning I gave her a break because of the holiday season, but this period of time past a while ago. About one month ago it looked like we finally had some tenants and signed a lease, but they failed to pay the first month's rent and the security deposit, and therefore, never moved in. Now after reducing the rental rate several times and to the cheapest rate of the neighborhood, I am starting to wonder whether there is something wrong with this manager and what to do with her. On one side, she seems organized and service minded but on the other side she just fails to get her job done. Any advice on what to do would be much appreciated!

Should I just change the property management company ASAP or my situation more normal than I realize?

I pay 1/2 month rent as a leasing fee the first month and then 8% per month for the rest of the lease period. 

@Levi Bennett Thanks a lot. I'll check them out.

@Cole Simpson and @Levi Bennett Do your clients use property managers for the STRs? If so, can you guys recommend a great property manager? I would love to try out STRs in Charlotte. 

I am also a newbie with 2 SFH rentals in Charlotte while I living in New York. I think it is very difficult to achieve the 1% rule in Charlotte - with the hypothetical example above of a $300k SFH, I think a realistic monthly rent would be $1600-$1800. As mortgage interest rates likely continues to increase the next year or two, I find it very hard to find reasonable SFHs that cash flows in this red hot market.

@Jim K. Nuff said!

I currently rent an apartment in New York and own a couple of rental properties in North Carolina. The apartments here in NY are so expensive that the cost of renting is far lower than having to pay interest on a mortgage + condo fees + property taxes. On top of that, my employer subsidizes about half the rent, so it really do not make much sense for me to own here. If I lived in another part of the country I might reconsider if the numbers would work.