All Forum Posts by: Johnny Dee

 Thanks Doug - I may ping you with some questions. I see an extensive list here so that should help. :)

It's for an investor in texas who bought a new build. Not for me.

Hi,

LF what you might imagine - responsive, smart, organized, active, reasonably priced property management in east Mesa and Gilbert.

I'd appreciate any recommendations.

Thank you!

So far Rocket City PM has been good in most respects. 

The only place where they seem a little weak is in repair costs. They have an in-house repair team. I think this can be good as it means there is some accountability for work done and hopefully good communication between PM & repair person. However my sense of it is that their price for work done is on the high side. They estimated $3000 for make ready repairs on the house. I decided instead to have it done by outside workers and got all of the work save one $395 item for $1295 so I'm lined up to save about $1300 compared to their $3000 estimate. That's significant. 

To be fair I think I got a good deal on the painting and a few items done free by a handyman with a big heart, but even if that price had been a little higher I think I'd still have saved money compared to Rocket City PM.

I don't plan to fire them because they seem to be diligent and savvy in the market. However I'll take a careful look at any future repair estimates they give me before proceeding with them, and if the high repair costs continue I may have to move on from them.

I don't want to slam anyone so would prefer not to mention the company. I think they are good people, perhaps just overloaded with too many houses for their staff of 2 people. It's been 2 months since I've been able to reach the agent by phone, text, or email (I've sent plenty of phone calls texts and emails but no response) and about 2.5 months since it's been vacant and I'm just now getting a painting quote.

My first property manager back in the spring was a big national company. My feeling after that experience is that having a big company do the management is never a good thing. Their call center in Chicago(?) never knew anything about the house and couldn't keep anything straight. The guy they hired to lease it in Huntsville put in a predatory tenant who paid 1 month rent (first month) while living there, brought in 3 rowdy dogs without permission and the house looked like a bomb hit it when they left.

I'm going with Rocket City PM and crossing my fingers. Thank you for the recommendation. :) 

Thanks Annie & John. Have you had any experience with their service providers? Are the prices reasonable?

Hi,

I bought a rental in Huntsville in April that's been a disaster. I first had a big prop mgmt company and they were a total failure. Since then I've hired a decent prop mgr but he's very hard to reach. I've been trying to reach him for about a month through text phone call and email without reaching him. So unfortunately I need to move on and get another property manager to get the house profitable. It's only collected one month of rent since April and I've had thousands in needless repairs due to bad management not fixing or investigating issues that should have been dealt with quickly. This latest manager has been working on the "turn" for probably three months and still doesn't have the house ready to go despite quick funding by me for anything he's needed.

Does anyone have a good recommendation. Please only reply or pm me if you are sure you have a good property manager, I don't need any more failures.

Thank  you

Hi,

I'm interested in being added to wholesaler's email lists please. I'm looking for buy and holds as well as flips for myself and an investor. If you have wholesale deals pls PM me for email and contact info.

Thanks

Thanks Robert I'll check out AZREIA

Thanks for the thoughts on possible coming downturn.

re: downturn I think it's tough to predict the market. All markets are to some extent cyclic so we'll have to see a downturn sometime but I'm not convinced it's in the short or even medium term. I think the demand today is real demand from qualified buyers, not demand from "signature loan" buyers who are claiming they make lots of money when they are in fact unemployed. It's tough to get financing these days.

If the market does turn down this year or next year I'm not planning to sell houses, I'm planning to just rent them and ride it out. Yes my money would buy more during a downturn but on the flip side if a downturn happens in a year or two I'd have missed out on a year or two of cashflow tax free income.

Anyway, the thread is threatening to go off topic so I'd appreciate it if we can sort of stay on topic of how to buy buy and hold for cash flow in Phoenix now rather than whether or not real estate investment is a good idea or not. :)

Jeff, I'm not sure it's possible to get houses 20% below market easily in Phoenix now. I'm seeing multiple offers on properties in many cases, and generally rising demand for available housing. I attended a flipping seminar late last year and the consensus from all of the flippers was that it's tough to find a deal now in Phoenix. The houses that are 20% below market probably need quite a lot of work making them not such a great deal. I also am not a professional flipper with a pipeline generated by direct mail, wholesalers, bandit signs, etc. I'd just be buying from the MLS expecting to buy solid deals not exceptional deals.