In desperate need of help

[Cosette Trantow]

Hello everyone. I'm new to owning rentals, I have 2 duplexes (Newburgh Heights and Shaker Heights)

I had a very good relationship with my property manager until recently. He was always slow to send things like invoices and I've been repeatedly asking him for invoices from March and May- I still don't have them. I know this was my mistake for not getting them before sending the money he requested (he'd done a couple rehabs for me before and it wasn't an issue). 

He placed a tenant into my first property starting July 1 and the PM told me he was going to set me up in his new portal. I still haven't gotten the link for the new portal so I can't see the lease for the tenant and I haven't seen any money come in for August rent (PM get full first months rent so I wouldn't have gotten anything for July).

In June my PM found me an off market deal and his contracting business is doing the rehab (which he's done for me before). I was supposed to be getting weekly updates/ pictures and the project is supposed to end October 31. He was supposed to ask for a draw at the end of July and hasn't.

Recently I've been sending an email every other day for the invoices and link to the portal. It's like he doesn't hear me. Of course, I'm also asking for updates to the project and he keeps telling me he'll call me with an update. I have no idea why he won't just sent the invoices and link since they're easy to take care of. I still have no clue what's happening at my project- I know people don't work for free so I'm sure it's going nowhere. 

Obviously, I can't have this kind of relationship with my PM (we had developed a friendly relationship and I have no idea what happened). He recently had a death in the family and is irritated that I won't give him time for to deal with that, but this has been a problem for long before the death and now he won't return my texts or answer my phone calls. 

I feel like I'm being help hostage because I don't have the lease for my only tenant and he's the contractor on my project. I'm new to the area so I don't know any other contractors. 

I'm so deep in this that I can't see it clearly so please tell me what you would do in this situation. I can easily replace him as PM on my first property, but how do I get him to give me the lease? And how do I replace him on my project? I have a private lender that's paying for the rehab and Shaker Heights has my money in escrow. I've heard how hard it is to find a good contractor, so how do I find one?

Help! I feel so stupid for getting into this situation.

[Gino Barbaro]

@Cosette Trantow

The hardest thing to do in business, in my opinion, is to remove someone when they aren't doing the job, or in your case, performing abysmally. The short term pain you'll incure is well worth it when you look back three months from now.

I would start interviewing other management companies ASAP. Get referrals from your broker, google them.

There are other contractors out there, especially now that work is slowing down.

Once things slow down, I would document what went wrong. It seems as if  you never had control of the system, and there were no clear set of expectations. This is just a learning lesson, and I promise, 6 months from now, it will just be another one of those.

Gino