Hey Guys, My parents are reaching retirement age, and with the kids all grown up and out of the house they're looking to move into a more manageable one story house. They've been thinking about putting their current house up for rent, but not sure if they're up for the responsibilities of being land lords. I've heard of people using management companies to do all the work for a percentage of the rent. Do you guys know of anyone you would recommend? Do you have any advice for this type of venture?
be careful and don't assume the property management company is going to do much more than collect rent. Sure some are better than others as always, but really what are you expecting? One property management company that had my mothers house didn't do anything and when there was a problem they would not fix the problem just band aid it. We had a sewage issue that could have been addressed earlier through common sense, but they instead chose to keep sending a plumber at $85 a whack vs. trying to understand much less even know anything. We ended up wasting lots of cash on things that could have been done right the first time but weren't due to property management 'handling it' Much of this happened while my mother was sick with cancer so we did think they were 'handling it' People when renting do dumb stuff ..a broken window where the property management company wants to get a gucci window goes straight on the bill and deducted right from rent. Some management companies will go as far as to have wink wink agreements with plumbers,electricians, carpenters, etc Even if managed by 3rd party, You need to have a good pulse on what's going on with property in an ongoing format. You need to be actively involved on some levels or you can get burned like we did on maintenance and other costs similar. Not sure what the percentages are in fees but I don't know my personal experience was not a good one. We did both.. rent it ourselves and property management. A strong agreement, deposit, with acceptable credit rating will go pretty far on your own on itself. Certainly the pros may do more but when the property management company sent out the sheriff to evict the one tenants they only hired the sheriff for half the day. Of course that allowed the tenants to walk off with fridge,and flooded the house. So I wouldn't put all my stock in any management company. They have incompetent jokers just like the next place. Do it yourself if you can.. just my 2 cents
Where are you located? Houston? I've used Zing for almost 3 years now and have never had any problems like the ones listed in the post above.
