All Forum Posts by: Susan Maneck

 In my experience it is the newer houses that are more likely to have problems. If the foundation hasn't moved in fifty years it probably won't. But you are right it is the clay underneath that is the problem, not the way the foundation was built. For that reason you want to know if the neighborhood as a whole has this problem.

Usually it let's you message after you do a connect. I'll send you my regular email. I'm not sure what you are planning to do with these empty lots. I don't know whether it is still the case but for awhile the city of Jackson was selling empty lots for just $50 if you presented a plan for what you wanted to do with it. 

 Well, I'm only intimately familiar with the situation in the Jackson Metro area.  Where I buy houses the average lot size is about a quarter of an acre. The county assesses those lots as worth about 10K, but when houses burn down in the neighborhoods where I have houses, the rarely rebuild them. The best way to get rid of an empty lot there is to donate it to Habitat. As least then you can write off what the County claims the property is worth. Mind you, all of my properties are worth more than their appraised value now, but during the Recession the City Manager got the bright idea that the way to easily raise revenue was to raise the appraisals, and they ended up higher than the resale value of those properties. 

I've never gone that route because I find it just too risky. A lot of properties in Mississippi have foundation problems and if you buying property that way, there is no way of knowing. It sounds like they want to get as close to the assessed value as possible, and I remember that during the Recession assessed values were higher than you could actually sell a property for. Also, you get a quit claim, not an actual title. 

David is not a PM, he is a handy man and it was in that capacity that he went to that property. If you don't want to use him, you are free to find another repairman who doesn't charge for service calls. And the quote you got was what the plumber had quoted them. 

Look, if you are bad-mouthing people who are not here, they certainly have the right to respond.

 Obviously I can't answer for everything you say they did, but I did talk to her briefly. I know, for instance, the $350 rather than $450 being delivered was a mistake which I believe was corrected. I know David charges $85 for a service call, so if you asked him to do anything minimal that would have been the charge. I've used property managers in Arizona and I know they used to charge me $35 just to call someone and that was some 30 years ago. I was grateful Katrina didn't have those kinds of charges. But keep in mind that David is just a handy man. For a more complicated job like floor warping and plumbing he would have gotten bids on. The plumber they got a bid from also did a major job on one of my houses and I saw how rotten the pipes were under the house. I understand your house is on Brockley. I know that neighborhood and all the houses I've looked at there had foundation problems. Are you sure that isn't part of your problem? I had a tree fall on one my houses during a rain storm last summer. He found someone to fix that roof for far less than the insurance company paid me, and they did a good job. I'm surprised you could get someone to come out from Memphis for jobs that only pay $140 or even $600. It's over 200 miles and a three hour drive each way! Something isn't adding up here. 

Katrina (who owns Dove Realty) and her husband David, who often does handyman stuff are regular people who just do their job. Her fees are straight forward, no surprises. Sometimes David makes mistakes with repairs but I've never known them to try and cheat me. I've been working with them since I bought my first investment property 13 years ago. 

The problem is that Katrinas are going to become more and more frequent as time goes by what with global warming.