All Forum Posts by: Jennifer Drake

 Good question! I ask a lot of questions when I'm searching for a new PM. In particular, now I make sure I can talk to the person who will be my direct contact at the company. Often (as happened with Northpoint), I had only talked to the person in charge of bringing in new clients. That person is typically very polished and gives all the right answers. But I want to know that the actual property manager is communicative, can deal with curveballs from tenants, can stay on top of CMHA, etc. I don't want a PM who is only good when things are going well. I want to make sure the PM can handle challenges--that's why we hire PMs!

I wanted to issue a word of caution to any real estate investors in the Cleveland area. Avoid Northpoint Property Management at all costs. I could give a laundry list of issues, but overall, they are completely understaffed and will give you more headaches than they will relieve. It was a full-time job to manage my property manager here--and a good thing I did because the mistakes (often involving them wasting my money) just kept piling up. Also, when I switched to new management, Northpoint suddenly issued new "fees" (some back-dated for 2 years ago) and wouldn't pay out the money that they owed me. We'll probably have to battle that out in court. Fun!

Cleveland is a great market, but hopefully my warning here will help you avoid the headaches I endured. Best of luck!