All Forum Posts by: Brandon Laughridge

Thank you Robert!  We appreciate when people share good feedback like this!  It’s incredibly difficult to get people to share positive experiences online and unfortunately being threatened with an online “blasting”(generally for simply upholding lease terms) is fairly common and we can’t backdown every time that happens. 

Hi @Snehann Kapnadak. I was digging into search results for our name early this morning and came across this thread. I’m not super active on BP so I didn’t see it until now!

Online reviews are one of the toughest parts of our business. Some we have earned (all the good ones, none of which are fake, and some of the bad) while others are pretty hollow without context for the rest of the situation. In weak moments, I would love to publicly share that context but I choose to take the high road and not do so as I have read snide business rebuttals in the past and find it generally comes of worse than little or no response.

We are absolutely not perfect but we are striving to be better every day. @Dan Krupa said it well — rarely is a job well done rewarded with a positive review.  For most people, I think PMs fall more in the utility or commodity “bucket” rather than being seen as a local merchant that they want to tell friends and family about.  I’m fairly happy with my internet service, water, electric, etc at my home but I can’t say I’ve ever felt compelled to give a public review about any of those things.

The reality is that we have to give lots of news people don’t love — your rent is going to be increased (our operating expenses have gone up), your AC will be fixed in the morning (it’s 12AM and we do AC calls during business hours), etc. Most people are great and understanding so long as we live up to our obligations. However, there is a small, discontented minority that’s fairly “unpleasable” and leases us with no choice but to take a reputation hit as we clearly cannot simply back off those sorts of situations because we have been threatened with bad online reviews.

For those that truly want to give constructive feedback, every tenant has my email and every email we send has a line that says “Unhappy with my service? Submit feedback.” Those responses go to me and I respond to all. 

One of our differentiators is the fact that we actually answer the phone. I know that sounds extremely trivial, but call property management companies or leasing ads and see the hit rate on getting to a live person in 30 seconds or less. You’ll find that it’s very, very low. We are fanatical about it and I’m investing in a team of customer service reps to get even faster.  I say this just to give a little color and show that we don’t just do the bare minimum and I’m pretty fanatical about the customer experience though we are not anywhere close to as good as I want us to be...that goal post keeps moving! :)

@Dan Krupa

Beyond the obvious debate between SFR and apartments, I think it depends on the scale you're aiming for out of the gate and what return you're seeking (which loosely translates into age of property here in KC). I think if you have visions of, say, 10 units and you're agnostic to whether they are $50k houses or $50k apartments, I would go apartments. To use my example, managing the manager of a small apartment building from CA would be vastly easier than managing a manager of 10 individual homes.

In my opinion, it sounds very difficult to play in a remote market with an "awkward" scale of SFRs.  You either want a handful (say 5 or less) or enough that you can run it as a real business (25+).  I'll fully admit that's a bias from owning some KC SFRs while living in CA, moving back to KC and firing the manager in order to keep better control of things (and I'm not one of those people who is dead set on self managing long term).  

I know many people make it work, I just think you're safer from an asset management point of view with apartments.

@Michael Wentzel The company I use offers the option and I'm paying lower premiums than the OP mentioned for what sounds like a similar sort of property (also in KC). 

Based on a $125k home built in 1948, I'm guessing you have replacement cost coverage.  If you're looking to optimize cash flow, you could consider going with cash value (basically your purchase price, I think they can adjust it if you put a bunch of rehab money in as well). 

I personally prefer to do this as I think opportunities are relatively abundant and cash flow + the potential work of finding a new opportunity should a total loss occur outweighs the potential boon that would be a new property/big check.

A while back I wrote a little post on my impression of KC zip codes (as a native and investor).  It's kind of an interesting idea for a tool/feature for BP.  Something along the lines of a zip code or neighborhood wiki from an investor's perspective.  It would take some policing to keep it on topic but with some reasonable rules, it could be really interesting data and far more helpful than pure stats or outlets like City-Data that tend to be overrun with biased lurkers.  

I just purchased a house a few miles from here in the Waldo/Brookside area.  As @Engelo Rumora says, Troost is very much a dividing line (sadly).  West of Troost is viewed as a historic, quaint family area and East of Troost is viewed as sketchy if not completely unsafe--depending on who you ask.  My opinion is that it's "pocket-y" East of Troost.   The trouble that you might face is how that stigma affects you on resale (and rentals to some extent).  That would be my biggest fear.

Here's some good background if you're interested:  http://kcur.org/post/how-troost-became-major-divide-kansas-city

@Jenna Y. That is awesome feedback!  Thanks for taking the time to write such a thorough response.  It's greatly appreciated.  It sounds to me like the consensus is that I should simply dip my toe in with a single unit and be prepared to "settle" with a normal rental property if the rental market or my sanity aren't quite what I projected.

@Nat C. Good advice. Thanks for chiming in with your experience. I appreciate it.

@Account Closed There are most definitely shady people that use AirBnB (though I believe it's likely a small minority) but the company itself is not shady at all. It's a huge success story with 100's (if not 1000's) of employees and billions in funding. It's rumored to be going public soon.

@Brant Richardson I agree I initially thought of it as a vacation only thing as well. The interesting thing is that it's really an arbitrage play that people are starting to use instead of hotels. Even in KC, a nice hotel in a good area is going to cost $150 or more a night and a blah room in the 'burbs would be pushing $100/night. I think AirBnB is truly starting to be used like a distributed hotel network. Unique experiences, better locations, cheaper prices = awesome.

@Michael Lemieux Glad you checked it out. I highly recommend trying it as a guest sometime when you travel. I've had nothing but great experiences.