property mgmt review - seeking advice - rei nation

[Amie Liu]

Hi all - 

long time lurker here. We purchased a property back in '22 and it was a great experience with REI nation. It was truly a white glove service from selection of the home, to finding a lender, to finding appraisers/inspections/ins agent etc. Our property management contact changed hands a couple of times but the reps were great (good transition, responsive, professional responses, etc.). We had maintenance here and there. While a couple of the charges were higher than expected (I am comparing the prices to the Bay Area in Cali; I am familiar as we own here as well), we paid as the service was still quite high.

Fast forward to this past summer, started having some issues and was wondering if anyone else works with them and can provide some oversight 

1) prop mgmt agent - we switched to a new agent and we have been having issues (addressing us by the wrong name/gender/etc, spelling errors in emails, long response times, one word responses to issues that were outstanding for a while, not contacting the right person despite us requesting several times, etc.) 

2) issues with communications regarding finding a new tenant - we were notified in October '23 that our tenants were not renewing and we requested that our unit be shown prior to vacancy in January '24. We were initially told that this would not be possible due to regulation. This was a surprise to me as even in California, with written notice, you are able to show units before vacancy. I took over 3 months for us to get a confirmation from Nate (prop mgmt lead?) to get us a response. He was supposed to call us several times and never did. He ended up emailing us instead after chasing for weeks. Even then, we were not able to get information to share with our network to rent the unit out despite asking. When communicating now, our agent seems to have forgotten that this was the case when discussing putting the unit up for rent and notes that it hasn't been actively shown until after the repairs were done. 

3) repairs costs - when our tenants moved out, i saw the repair cost for items. Even without the 15% markup, the charges seemed extremely high when comparing repair costs in Little Rock AK vs. SF Bay area. While costs have generally gone up, I am surprised it's the same as the bay area where things are way more expensive. Also, we paid but never got confirmation that the repairs were done or pictures until several email follow ups and phone calls. I would expect with the markup, the least the repair team could do would be to respond to an email. We were left on read basically after payment. 

We initially went with REI because we heard about the white glove experience and am surprised by the service as of this summer. I am not sure if there has been a change of mgmt or something else so wanted to get a POV from other potential clients of theirs. Also- would be open to other prop mgmt companies in the area that people can refer to.

Thanks

AL

[Chris Clothier]

i appreciate the shout-outs from a few of you on here asking if I was going to comment.  I was about to have to comment to save everyone from @Engelo Rumora and @James Wise, but luckily Amie posted!  It was great to be able to hear directly from our customer and understand her point of view.  

Contrary to popular belief, the customer is not always right.  However, they are always the customer.  I have tried to keep a policy on here of holding comments until I have given our customer the chance to speak with me directly as long as I can verify their comments and point of view are not contrary to the facts.  Then, I may post comments very quickly!  

In this case, I read the customer service notes and email communication and felt we dropped the ball.  We had a lot of communication, which after reading through it was simply not effective.  We also dropped the ball on a few details and it was enough to cause confusion and then the need for more communication.  In my eyes, none of this amounts to a major issue, but that doesn't mean the issues are not valid and it is a great opportunity to try and improve upon the 2%. 

We also dropped the ball by agreeing to operate outside the norms of our processes.  We are managing a $2B portfolio that consists of individual investors.  8,000 properties over two decades.  We have built our processes on the back of experience.  The team should have said no to the original request, but we didn't.  We made an exception and paid a price for it.  It exacerbated a small issue and made it bigger than it needed to be.

In the end, it is a good learning experience for our team.  As for jumping on the line with a client owning one property out of 8,000, I am not able to always jump on a call.  We have a phenomenal team that works with every client and department leaders who are authorized to make those calls.  In this case, I felt we could have done better and wanted to follow through myself and be the one who connected with Amie.