Quote from @Richard F.:
Aloha,
Define "communication could be better". What are your expectations? What does your Management Agreement state as normal? What are they/are they not communicating that you are not happy with?
AH is a pure pain in the ... from the standpoint of a PM. AH requires (at least the last time I had to deal with them) the actual Owner ONLY to request the service calls. This creates unnecessary delays in taking care of our Tenant's issue, and, assuming we are point of contact for the Tenant, we are the ones who appear to be dragging our feet. Unacceptable. Then there is the issue of their choice of vendor's which were really hit or miss. More time wasted, and ultimately not a good, long term result, compared to other properties where we utilize proven, reliable, responsive technicians that solve the problem without any further grief.
You need to meet with local REI groups or other investors that have already vetted some contractors that they can recommend. Of course, you need to "test" them yourself before blindly taking their recommendations, but it is a better starting point than using unlicensed people, or the cheapest guy and his truck that you can find. Certainly, large Contracting companies will only be looking for larger jobs, and many companies specialize in insurance work, but there are plenty of well qualified smaller outfits that you can build a relationship with over time.
Hi, thanks for the answer and sorry for the late response...
Our property manager is a little hard to reach sometimes. We both were hoping for somebody a little more knowledge other then how to do a basic long term lease and collect rent.
He was very good to work with setting the property up on the beginning as we never had done anything like this.
But now that we have questions that range beyond a adequate rent amount he just has no answers: No idea, never done it, not my forte.( i basically don't even care ;-) )
We understand that we can't know everything. But; for somebody that displayed himself as more competent/familiar with the area, more reliable then the realtor we worked before with he falls a bit short. We where also hoping to be able to eliminate dealing with contractors from AHS and their customer service..but he still needs a approval and our involvement...Ohh well.Lesson learned.
AHS: still wait on that money, they messed up and send the check to the property in Virginia instead of the billing address.
How can you meet up with local REI groups if you are three states away? Have you every used anything other then AHS like Latchel ?.Right now we just have two doors, but sooner or later it will hopefully be more and I could imagine that this could ease things???
You are right...cheap is not always the best option, own research is important. I learned that the hard way.
