Something seemed "fishy" to me last year when I had first talked with Citrona. Mainly because they have a fake account on Facebook making their marketing posts in all of the Real Estate groups (Raina Beyond is the name on Facebook I believe), plus their website was very amateurish. However, I still decided to look into it further. I took the family on a road trip to Johnstown and checked out some of the properties, I talked to the local utility companies, the title company, insurance company, etc. and everything seemed legit. I knew at the very least I would get the deed to a property. I wanted to buy several properties but I told them I would do just 1 small duplex to test them out and see if I like how things work out and then I would buy many more.
I own several businesses but I had never had an investment/rental property yet. I was looking to get my feet wet with a cheap rental property so I could learn. This is becoming an expensive lesson...
I chose a duplex and closed in the beginning of August 2018. To this date (3/27/2019), I have only received ONE payment from them and that was after I told them my lawyer was going to get involved. This company's communication is absolutely atrocious! It takes MONTHS for them to return emails or phone calls. They had a rental/web portal that hasn't worked in the 9 months that I've been with them. Every time I called and talked to Kelly, the lady who I originally dealt with when I purchased the property, she would try to help and tell me I had to call someone else. She was very nice and seemed to try to be helpful. She actually DID get people to call me back, however, the person who would call me back just kept giving me non-answers: "Oh you didn't get a payment yet? I'll check on that", "Oh, one of your tenants hasn't paid in 3 months? I'll check on that.", "Oh, we had your closing date wrong by 3 weeks so we owe you more prorated rent? I'll check on that.", etc. etc. Of course, I never heard back about ANY of this. By the way, it was always someone different every month or 2 that was "managing" the Johnstown properties. I would call to talk to Michele and she was "no longer with the company" and then Amy took over...then within another month or 2, she was "no longer with the company". So it seems their turnover rate for the employees is very high.
So I've been emailing a list of questions about where my money is, what's going on with the non-paying tenant, about the water bill being like $500-$700 per month (oh yeah, there's that!), and the absolute worst thing is the fact that I found out they charge their management fee whether the tenant pays or not!!! SO they rob Peter to pay Paul! They charge for rent expected rather than rent collected! To me, I think this is a shady way to do business. There is no real motivation for the property management company to evict tenants and/or fill the vacancy as long as 1 tenant is paying their rent. Personally, I would rather pay MORE per door or a higher % if a property management company charges based on just rent collected. Anyhow, for any new investors out there, please pay attention to this before signing a contract with any property management companies.
At this point, I am desperately looking for a new property management company and I'll be talking to a lawyer to get all of this handled.
If anyone has any advice on another property management company in that area, please help.
My final assessment on Citrona is: I do actually have a deed to a property, maybe they mean well, maybe they are outright scammers, maybe they are just trying to make a quick buck on quick flips, I am not 100% sure...but one thing for sure is that their property management company is terrible and seriously lacks communication, and I would never recommend them. It's still up in the air what I find out about the inside of the property if I switch management companies...this could end up being worse.
I saw people on here asking for a detailed explanation of any dealings with this company, so I hope this helps.
