Moving from Property manager to doing it myself

[Andrew C Pye]

Due to having a bad experience with the property manager i have been using, I am looking at moving to managing places myself, and am looking for advice, vendor recommendations if anyone local has some good ones, or possible issues that people think i may run into.

 My manager has had issues with slow turnarounds, long vacancies except when i said to price somewhere very inexpensive, not answering emails in a timely and consistent manner, doing repairs and upgrades during a turnaround taking longer than necessary, maintenance vendors insisting on things that aren't actually necessary ( think replace an electrical panel when there are just several bad outlets in a kitchen), and having to send a vendor out for the same problem repeatedly. Not great stuff, and i see no reason to be paying someone to give me headaches. 

I am in the Lakeland area with one single family house that is on section 8 here, and one duplex in Leesburg.  All are currently occupied. I am looking at house hopping and renting out the place i am currently living in, and dreading the turnaround. I work as an electrician at a factory so i do know tradesy people in this area. Leesburg I don't know people, and its a bit of a drive. 

I am looking at using Stessa manage package as my software. My thinking is that having this to take care of payments and maintenance requests will keep my paperwork streamlined, and easy for everyone involved. Does anyone have and thoughts on this software as good/bad, pitfalls to watch out for, or that they have found it helpful? 

Does anyone have any recommended vendors for electrical, AC, flooring, Handyman, plumbing, etc, etc in the Orlando or Lakeland area? I am looking to add names to my list of people i can trust when i call them. 

Any thoughts on things i should be watching out for, or non obvious problems with what i have laid out so far? 

I appreciate any ideas and thoughts. Thanks. 

[JD Martin]

I have a house not far from you (Clermont area). There are a lot of scammers down there unfortunately. 

So managing yourself is not really that hard. We've self-managed our portfolio from the beginning and if you develop systems and streamline things it almost (remember: almost) manages itself. Honestly, for two houses you don't need to pay for anything. You should be taking payments online anyway and there are a number of free services that you can use (example: Apartments dot com, Turbo Tenant, Zillow) to take online payments through bank ACH. Most everything else can be done with pretty simple spreadsheets. We used Excel for years until we got enough houses that it made sense to move to a software package. 

Mostly what you need to do is standardize your processes. Standardize your leases, your methods of advertising, showing houses and procedures, rent collection, etc. Once you get those things solved a lot of things just end up on auto pilot and you fiddle with the knobs once in a while. 

Getting good relationships with important vendors will make life a lot simpler. You need a good HVAC, plumber, pest control, roofer, electrician, and handyman. You're not going to be calling flooring contractors or drywall contractors on a regular basis. The ones you want to have regular relationships with are your emergency providers.