All Forum Posts by: Michelle Eisenberg

@Robert Schumacher @Avi Garg @Patrick Liska @Max Householder @David Pham

I wanted to give you an update and thank you all again for your response and your encouragement to keep bugging them. I spoke to them again today, and they did do a showing today. The person apparently really liked it and is planning to put in application, but we'll see what happens. I don't know that this would have happened if I hadn't kept following up with them. Hopefully there will be more showings soon.

I'm really hoping we'll now be on a good track, but I'll definitely keep a close eye on it.

@Avi Garg Thanks for your advice. I'd be very happy with a once-weekly update as long as I can trust that things are going as smoothly as possible. I agree with you that asking them to update me daily is too much to ask. On the other hand, given what happened, I'm having trouble trusting them to actually get things moving right now, unfortunately. That makes me want to micro-manage, but I also don't want to get them so frustrated with me that it causes more problems. I'll probably start with calling slightly more frequently than once a week until I see that things are moving and then reduce the frequency.

@David Ounanian I don't think they do any formal screening, but they lay out their tenant requirements clearly on the site where people can schedule appointments and they ask three questions about income level, felonies, and past problems with landlords. They only do the full background and credit check once people actually put in an application, though. It doesn't sound like the issue has been unqualified people making inquiries, although I didn't get the best answer about who has been calling with interest. I'll likely call again tomorrow to see if any appointments were made today now that showing times are listed and to see if I can find out any more about what happened to the people who made inquiries.

@Alpesh Parmar Fortunately, the maintenance part of the company seems to be somewhat separate from the listing part of the company. Maintenance has actually been very quick to respond to emails and has done a good job of getting the property rent ready quickly. I have no complaints about that, and given my experience with them so far, I don't think I'll have problems with maintenance in the future. It's really the listing part of the company that I'm having difficulty with.

@Nathan Gesner Thanks for your in-depth response. I asked a number of these questions when I first interviewed them, and it all sounded positive. They're not a particularly cheap company (9% plus one month leasing fee). I'd rather pay 10% and have it leased quickly, though. I'll definitely make sure to ask all of these questions when I interview other companies, which I'm going to start doing now in case things don't start turning around with this one.

@Patrick Liska @Max Householder @David Pham

Thank you for your input. I took your advice to keep bugging them, and I called them this morning.  I purposely spoke to a different person than the original person I've been working with. It's actually not a particularly small property management company. The team I'm working with has four assistants in addition to the main property manager, and he's not the only main property manager at the company. 

When I spoke to them today, I told them about what was going on. First, I was told that there were no showings because they are so busy with other properties. Then when I insisted that even if there were no showings right away, something should have shown up on the scheduling page for sometime in the future, she checked and it turned out it wasn't assigned right (whatever that means). They got that fixed within an hour, which was good, although the first available showing is this Friday. It's better than before, though. However, there aren't any appointments listed for this weekend, which is when most people want to see properties. She did at least tell me that if someone calls in, they will try to fit them in sooner, but it's hard to know for sure if that's actually the case. I'm really hoping that people actually get to start seeing it soon. If I hadn't called, though, I don't know how long it would have taken them to realize something was wrong. 

I think I'm going to start calling around to see what other options are out there for property management, although I'll also see how it goes now that showings are available. They've done some things well, like getting the make-ready process going pretty quickly, but that won't matter if it doesn't get rented. 

One thing I'm wondering is whether property management companies will keep you updated about how many people have expressed interest and how many showings have been done. The property management company has an owners dashboard but it doesn't have this kind of information. I want to be able to keep tabs on how it's going. I'm willing to call every day to make sure it's actually being shown, but I'd rather not have to do that.

I have been working with a property management company in St. Louis to get the SFR we just bought rent ready. The process hasn't been perfect, but overall, they've done a good and relatively fast job of getting it ready. It's now listed, which is very exciting, but the property management company has been so busy showing their other properties that they don't have any available showing times for our property. On Friday, I was told that we had 8 inquiries in the past week, but no showings because they didn't have any available times. Now it's Sunday night, and we just missed out on our first weekend showing opportunity because of this. How worried should I be about continuing to work with this property management company?

I realize that no company is perfect, and I wouldn't want to trade one problem for a worse one. Should I be happy that the company gets so much business (which will hopefully carry over to our property) or worried that we're going to miss out on the prime time for renters?

I'd appreciate any advice you have.

@Bernard Reisz Thanks for the suggestion. I'll definitely look into Daniel Hyman. Based on what you said as well as the suggestions from @Paul Allen, @Michael Plaks, and others, I will start reaching out to CPAs on BP to learn more and hopefully find someone for this tax season. 

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to answer my question. I feel much more confident now that the value I will gain from working with a great CPA will be more than worth the money I will pay. 

Although I doubt I will end up a tax expert, I am also interested in learning more, so I also plan to take @Dave Toelkesand @Joe Splitrock advice and do a mock up of my taxes myself at the same time so I can compare. That may also help me think of questions that didn't occur to me before. 

It also hadn't occurred to me before posting that I could work with a CPA who isn't local to me. Thank you to everyone who pointed out that many BP tax pros offer Skype rather than in-person meetings that make it possible to really find a great tax pro rather than settling for someone who happens to be within easy driving distance.

Welcome to Bigger Pockets! I lived in St. Louis for 10 years but I moved to the California Bay Area around a year ago. My partner and I just started investing in St. Louis, but I really wish I had started investing while I was still living in St. Louis, so it's great that you're already thinking about getting started. I'll echo the posts above that suggested house hacking because that's the strategy I wish I had used when I still lived there. You can buy a duplex, triplex, or fourplex at 3.5% down and rent out the other units while you live in one. You just need to be confident that you can rent out the other units for at least as much as (and hopefully more than) your total property mortgage and expenses. That way, you can live rent free and save what you would have been spending on rent to buy additional properties. 

Where in St. Louis are you thinking about buying your first property?

Congratulations on getting started!

@Paul Allen Thanks for pointing that out! I was wondering how that would work using the online software. We will definitely have suspended passive losses because between depreciation and the expenses we will incur this year, we will have more passive losses than passive gains. I'll definitely watch out for that if I end up using H&RB or Turbo Tax. 

@Michael Plaks That's a really interesting idea to do it myself and then  have a professional check to make sure I didn't miss anything. If I have missed something and I need to pay to have it done correctly, I won't have lost anything, but if I manage to do it correctly, I'll save some money. I'll definitely consider that option. I definitely agree that whatever I decide for this year, I will hire a CPA in the near future because we do plan to buy at least one property a year for the next 10-15 years. The benefits of proactive tax planning are definitely attractive and I appreciate you pointing that out.

Thank you again for your advice!