My Roofstock Experience
Since there are few threads requesting for roofstock experience, decided to share my not-so-good experience with them.
Disclaimer: I might still work with them in the future, but definitely will not be my first or second choice to pick properties from them.
First Property
I did some research on few properties and finally found a one in Minnesota (IIRC). The numbers looked good and roofstock had all the valuation reports and everything else marked as green. What could go wrong, right? But thankfully, I went through every line in the property inspection report and noticed that under "Basement has water damage" marked as Yes. I was happy, since I found it, and furious at the same time. How could they mark all green for a property with basement water damage.
Second Property
I thought this was a one time mistake and then worked with one of their agents to identify another property in Indianapolis. Again, the numbers looked good and I submitted an offer. It got accepted and from that moment on, Roofstock assigned me an agent who was very responsive and dynamic (kudos to that). I carefully looked at the property inspection report and the images and every line item looked good and marked green.
I then engaged my lender and they sent someone to do an inspection/valuation. This is where things started to go south. The property assessor was obviously a tough guy and had highlighted every little thing as a disaster. But ... he found cracks on the wall (with images), broken windows, fences, structural issues in the kitchen which raised lender's and my eyebrows. How did Roofstock missed these? We then contacted Roofstock and their managers apparently had said they standby with *their* property inspection report. How can they standby on their report when the pictures were showing otherwise. I had a bit of rough time convincing them and finally decided to give up.
I did more research and found out that Roofstock bought this property for way less, spent few thousand $$ to renovate it and had added about 50-60% markup on the price. This was also obvious when the lender's property assessment came in low.
Summary
I had two consecutive bad experiences with them. One of the key traits I rely on REI is trust and they lost it with me by not only putting false information on their website and valuation report AND standing by those erroneous reports. How can I trust them going forward especially when I'm buying a remote property without being able to rely on the provided reports.
Hence, I decided to not to work with them at least for sometime because I don't want to spend a lot of time going through each and every item myself and not relying on the info they are providing.
This could be a one time thing for me but I warn everyone of you to spent extra time verifying the information they are providing and not solely rely on the numbers.
Roofstock still provides a very good property buying experience - no question on that. But they need to spend more time on making their reports on properties more realistic and build trust with the buyers.
Hope this helps someone.
Most Popular Reply
Hello Eran,
I've also had some terrible experiences with Roofstock. Right after closing on our property in Columbia, South Carolina, I've had to evict my tenant inside the property after she failed to pay rent for 2 months. Using a "roofstock certified" property manager (Marketplace Homes), I had to really push to start the eviction process. It was almost like pulling teeth to get them to start the eviction process after two months of nonpayment. I reached out to roofstock to help rectify the issue, which to their credit, they did. Roofstock offered a 6 month rent guarantee to help cover the costs of lost rent and the eviction process. Anyways, we are coming up on the end of the 6 month rent and we just got the tenant out late last month (December 2018). Getting updates from the, again, "roofstock certified" property management company during the eviction process was a total nightmare. I had to literally hunt down the the employees over there to get updates as to what was going on with my property. After about 4-5 months of having the property, the eviction process finally ended. It does not stop there though. I decide to terminate my partnership with Marketplace homes due to their lack of communication and professionalism. When I ask for my security deposit back to help cover the turn charges, the Marketplace Homes property manager turns around and says, "We don't have your security deposit on file. We never received one." Now, judging from their past performance with managing my property, I wouldn't put it past them to try to ookey-doke me out of my security deposit. I ended up calling my closing attorney to verify what happened with my security deposit. Sure enough, my closing attorney advised me that the security deposit was sent over to Marketplace Homes at the beginning of July and that it was cashed shorty after being sent. I called back Marketplace to advise them of the fact and was subsequently told that they double checked and saw that a security deposit was sent, but they did not know where it went. I am still in the process of trying to get my security deposit back from them, but it really makes me wonder about what it takes to be a "roofstock certified" property management company. Judging from marketplace homes' subpar performance and the fact that they lost my security deposit, it seems to me that it does not take much. I've reached out to roofstock to see if they can assist me in obtaining my security deposit back, but have yet to hear back from them. Marketplace has been doing the, "you should see it by next week" game for the past couple of weeks. Just a word of caution for those that do decide to invest with roofstock: the roofstock certification for property management does not mean much. It was an expensive lesson learned, but I do not think I will ever invest with roofstock, nor will I ever recommend anyone to do it based on my experience. Others might had a good experience, so its case by case. In my scenario, I was one of the "unlucky ones".