All Forum Posts by: Rebecca P.

I've been using Hemlane for years. I've been with them through a lot of changes but it keeps getting better and better. The only thing I would change is adding to their showing feature an automated lockbox. We are local but turn on the maintenance feature when we go out of town, or just need a break. 

It has been widely known that a decision was going to be made mid January. Huntsville is a great place for Space Command. It has the talent and land area to support this. It was not a 'last minute' decision. Colorado was never a permanent location. The part about 2023 is when the environmental study is to be completed. It is just paperwork. Of course the new administration could change everything. 

Does Section 8 not require signatures from the property owner when using a management company. We self manage and we had to provide our deed information and sign a bunch of papers some of which pertained to being the owner of the house.

For what's it worth we had a bad experience with Sec 8. It's so much easier to place a typical tenant. They didn't want to pay our rate even and we didn't find that out until after inspections. They also wanted us to place the tenant, then provide the contract. They thought we were crazy and said other landlords have no problem with this. I didn't place the tenant. The rent was lower than we had put on our intent to place a tenant. We did not know to expect that and spend some time going back and forth. They only budged a little. 

Having guaranteed rent is a fallacy. We kept getting notices that our tenants portion was changing. It was half of over 1300 in some instances. AND on top of that - Huntsville Housing Authority was late with their payments. They said that they have till the 5th to pay. With ours, mid lease, we didn't receive payment. It was an accounting error and they were not sending out another round of payments until the 15th. 

Tenants were ok but were rough on the house. They broke the front wood door and other things. They ended up breaking their lease and I was quite OK with that! We ended up renting for 300 over that on next lease. 

I've been burned in Huntsville with a permitting issue. I can't even talk about it, it still makes my blood boil. To say they were difficult would be a gross understatement. 

Unless I had some killer deal fall in my lap, I'm not buying in city limits. In fact, I sold 3 in HSV city limits this year. 

May I ask that you please be considerate of homeowners that are being bombarded with these things? While there was once a time that sending out postcards generated a lot of leads, it is now a really annoying practice to homeowners and investors. People in this area are starting to be very vocal about it. Personally, I don't have an excessively large portfolio but I get postcards, texts, unmarked letters, and interrupted with phone calls daily on my phones, my husbands phone, and now my CHILD's phone! I signed us up on the DO NOT CALL list but somehow, wholesalers and other investors are able to circumnavigate this. There is no way to OPT OUT. Before the investment BOOM in Huntsville this was just a mild interruption, but now it has reached a level of ridiculousness. I suggest being more creative in your investment opportunities. 

Huntsville - Don't bother. Zoning will not allow it. 

I agree with @Michael S. 

Often the strategy seems to be start high and quickly reduce or price low to encourage a bidding war (especially anything under 150k anywhere near Madison). For example, we are around the corner from a house that recently went on the market and was well priced. The door almost stayed open the entire day with revolving buyers. It had so many offers we didn't even bother. It closed in less than a week.

Married to one ❤️

We use Hemlane as well. I love the feature to choose to have maintenance tasks handled by the Hemlane team when we are on vacation. For us, Hemlane is the best middle ground to DIY vs. paying a property manager. 

Athens, Ardmore, Hartselle, Cullman,  Florence... Just to name a few