All Forum Posts by: Peter Lohmann

Crime is important and is correlated with other factors like default rates, eviction rates, quality of the homes, quality of the tenant base, etc. I would stay away from medium-high or high crime areas. We won't manage in areas that I don't feel safe sending our leasing agent.

I had no previous experience other than owning a couple of my own rental properties and managing them myself.

You're fine to go directly into property management. It's not a very high-skill business on the individual employee level. As long as you are organized you'll be fine. Try to find a local company that owns all their own "scattered-site" (not large apartment buildings) units. That will give you the experience you want. Working for a "fee" manager (who manages property they don't own) would be fine too, but that comes with a lot of distraction and activity that you won't get value from based on your goals.

We provide a refrigerator in all units. If the fridge goes bad we replace with similar. I don't ask the tenant what he/she wants nor do I care.

This is the correct approach. 

Rently is fine for the basics, assuming they have fixed their reliability problems. Showmojo is MUCH more customizable, to the point of being very intimidating if you aren't a professional property manager. I don't recommend it for small scale. We like it though.

If you're looking for advice on how to select a property manager, we are 2 episodes in to a brand new series that takes a deep dive on this topic:

Episode 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTMSLCGy848

Episode 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnCmIP7sbec

Happy to chat if you want. Shoot me a message and we'll get something set up.

Eric is correct. I highly recommend leaving Guardian in place. They charge the tenant a slightly higher rate such that it nets to zero cost to the owner for their service.

Are these areas bad enough to avoid investing? 

Yes, for a new investor.

Would you rate any of these areas C/C-? 

At the very least. I would call them D.

James Wise already said everything that needs to be said. He did my job for me! You're complaining about your property manager who has kept your building 100% occupied for 5 years minus a month or two? Am I reading that right?