They are on the east coast North Carolina, so communication with them can be very slow, however i don't think it has to do with the time zone differences, they just choose to respond slowly to you or fail to get back to you in a timely manner. 

Get a good property manager since you will have offset time zones - we dealt with an HVAC issue from Germany a few years ago and the time difference killed me.As for taxes - we lived in Germany for years and had to file both there and in the US (not necessarily pay in both places though). 

So far, I think the communication with them has been great.In the beginning I worked with Alan, and I appreciated that fact that he was willingly to work with my schedule, especially dealing with the 2 hour time zone difference between CA and TN when setting up meetings with me.

A lot of early mornings and late nights in order to match the time zones well. 

Time zones are tricky!

I would say that although the town will make you dot your i's and cross your y's most of time zoning boards will approve a variance on projects like this one.  

@Dave Toelkes Beat me to it (and we're on the same time zone).  

At the same time zoning is very important - a property has to be zoned to allow for a multi-family structure. 

CST time zone here.

I shutter to think of the hassle if they did get started and were in different time zones not returning calls in addition to not taking pics to show progress routinely.