All Forum Posts by: Carrie Smith

I'm in the Bay Area and have been researching this a bunch. I have a VA for other work I have but have just started having that person help for my rentals. But when I researched further, I found Global Strategic which specializes in property management VAs in the Philippines. What appealed to me is they train the VAs specifically on everything related to property management, they help you build out a process guide for them to be trained on that's built on how you run things, and they have a team that will support them so that it wouldn't all be on me to answer each of their questions or train them on every aspect. The pricing was abt $2k for 40-hrs a week which I understand is high for a VA in the Philippines but seemed reasonable given all of the other support and infrastructure they offer. I don't think they do part-time VAs. My ideal would be to find someone locally who can do in-person stuff for me so I don't have to but if it doesn't work out, I think I'm going to try Global Strategic next. I did talk to a few other VA companies and the pricing was similar but the ones I talked to didn't specialize in PM which means a lot of that initial training and support would fall back on me, which isn't ideal. It also means more work with each turnover or if people are out sick, etc.

Just found out the wood balcony railings on our fourplex in Northern CA need to be replaced. The pickets and guardrails are an interior composite MDF instead of outdoor treated wood (previous owner installed them). With lumber so high, I'm trying to learn about replacing with redwood, powder coated steel, composite, or aluminum and am looking for any advice on balancing upfront costs (quotes have been $35-50k) and ongoing maintenance. I'm leaning towards replacing with metal so that we won't have to paint every few years, last time it was $2900. Installation should also be less. What would you do/ have you done?

As an aside, the soffits are now vented and soft-story ordinances in the area are for 5+ units.