Property Management Advice

[David Pittman]

Good afternoon BP!

Me and my wife are looking at leaving the country for a year and then possibly moving out of the country permanently. We have a custom SFH that I built in 2021 (I am a custom home builder).So I have all the contractors I need to maintain the property. We built the house to live in and then sell, but our plans have changed. So it was not built to be a rental house per say. These are a few questions I have:

1.) Will a property manager work with the contractors I used to build the house? I'm not worried about the cleaners or the law guys, I'm thinking about the big ticket items (mechanicals, roof). We still use all the same mechanical contractors and would like to use the vendors I know.

2.) Is it worth getting a PM for just one house? Placement is my biggest concern with doing it myself and the fact that we will be in different time zones is the other. I would be concerned that there would be an issue that I couldn't address, like the AC going out in August/September. 

3.) IF anybody had any recommendations for a PM that is in the Galveston county area, we would love to hear them. The reviews for PM's that I have found so far are pretty bad and we've all heard the horror stories of bad PM.

We want to keep the house because we have family close (as they age we would be very close) and if something happens to us oversees we will at least have a house in the states to come to. The plan would be to rent the house for at least the first 2 years, then make a decision about keeping the house or not.

Thank you guys for any help!

[Drew Sygit]

@David Pittman a PMC's challenges in using an owner specific contractor:

1) Licensed & insured?

2) Willing to sign a W-9 for 1099 payment reporting?

3) How quickly will they respond?
- Can't wait more than a few days to fix a/c!

4) Will they work within the PMCs maintenance procedures?
- Does the PMC expect their contractors to call the tenants for an appointment? Many contractor will just make one call or text and that's it. Many contractors also do NOT have good track records of returning calls/texts - so that will really upset a tenant.
- Will they provide acceptable bids?
- Will they start work without 1/2 upfront?
- Will they provide acceptable proof of completed work?

5) Will they expect someone to meet them at the property with a check for payment or accept the PMCs payment terms? Most PMCs now pay electronically, will they work with that?

There's a lot more moving parts than the average DIY landlord realizes when you scale!