All Forum Posts by: Sagar S.

Not sure how is Hemlane growing. They had "14,000 and counting" on their Sign In page forever. 

3 properties now, 4th one soonish. Working well so far for me. 

One tenant doesn't like Hemlane for maintenance requests, says they are late to react. For now, he is using his own contacts for maintenance and I am deducting from the rent. 

1 tenant has been using Hemlane for more than a year and working well so far.

Another tenant is new and no maintenance requested yet. Will see how that goes.

Since you are in Atlanta area, I highly recommend Lev Mills (hemlane recommended) who I used for my Atlanta property. He took care of repairs, cleaning and getting rent ready and placed a tenant. He’s awesome. 

Right. Hemlane provides agent recommendations that they work with. You can use one of them for tenant turnover or you can use anyone that you know. You can just add them to your  hemlane account. 

I used hemlane recommended agent for my initial leasing after I bought the property. 

For my new property my buying agent is helping find a tenant as well. Once tenant is in place I’ll use hemlane for maintenance issues. 

I've never had another maintenance request from the tenant since I posted 5 months ago. So far so good. Not aware of what new changes Hemlane made within those 5 months.

>>Who gets billed for maintenance work, tenant or property owner?

Property Owner

>>How can you manage that billing?

You can add your bank info to hemlane and once you get invoiced hemlane pays from that account. There is even more options on hemlane about them providing some sort of payment card. Not on top of my head, but is listed on hemlane website.

>>Can you find your own maintenance techs to do the work if you don't like any of the quotes Hemlane provides? 

Yes, you can provide your own tech. In fact you can provide your own folks prior to any maintenance issue. You can sort the techs in order of your preference and hemlane will contact them. You don't need to choose any of Hemlane's options.

>>For showings, do you have to do all the coordination on showings outside of initial contact with the agent?

No, hemlane provided agent will do it. You can also bring your own agent if you prefer. But you don't need to showing by yourself. The leasing fee depends on the agent but normally its around 70% of the 1st month rent. This is not set by hemlane but by the agent. Hemlane just helps you find an agent if you don't have one for leasing and showings.

Ok, 2nd month, 2nd maintenance request from the tenant. Tenant saw some termites near fireplace and was worried. Tenant uploaded a photo to Hemlane and opened a Maintenance request but also pinged me on my phone (which is what I wanted to avoid, because of timezone differences). Hemlane started sourcing for this request. They only sourced for 1 vendor, who scheduled, inspected and gave a quote for $1350 - this took about 4 days.

One thing to note, hemlane only sources and works with licensed professionals, which they clearly documented somewhere on their website. In a way this is good but also expensive. Here is the good part, hemlane realized the quote was high and pinged me, plus, also reached out to an agent for a referral. Since the referral we got didn't have a license, hemlane didn't go with them and suggested that they will find someone else. The referral was from a trusted agent and they were in the termite business for a long time, I was open to go with them due to better prices.

Requested hemlane to consider them but also find other vendors. The hemlane co-ordinator didn't respond for a day (later learned he got sick and was off that day) and since it has already been 10 days since the request was opened, I decided to directly deal with this issue, got the inspection and work done in 2 days.

I wanted to avoid taking over the maintenance request and let hemlane deal with it to understand the process and see if this is sustainable with multiple homes with them. But I had to ultimately take over, because, the tenant was really worried it getting delayed. Not sure if this would be the case by a real PM on-site. I guess not. I have 3 other homes with an on-site PM and never got involved anything maintenance related, but I believe the repair costs are high ? 

Ultimately, it bears repeating, Hemlane is not at all passive even with full maintenance plan, but it somewhere in the middle of onsite PM and doing on your own.

I am using it since 2 months now. 

1st trial free month: Got an agent assigned to help with tenant placement. That agent was super awesome. He got lots of repairs done, placed a tenant. He took care of all the repairs, got multiple quotes, let me choose the vendors, ads, tenant showings, selections and finally placement. 

By the time all the repairs were done, tenant started from 2nd month. 2nd month is with hemlane with 24/7 maintenance support. I had 1 maintenance request with the tenant and it went well. It is not completely passive as you are still the PM. Tenant initially contacted me for the repair and I asked them to contact hemlane. Hemlane took over, requested bids but only 1 vendor responded. Eventually the vendor I added to my account did the work and hemlane paid him.

I am not sure if that was the best price I got because there was only 1 quote. Need to see what happens later with the future maintenance requests.

Started using hemlane for a property I acquired recently. Had an agent assigned for showings and getting it rent-ready. So far its pretty good.

Thank you all, this is all very valuable.