All Forum Posts by: Andrew West

My wife and I own quite a few properties in the Metro Detroit/Detroit market.  We know all to well the pain of bad management.  As an aside, RPM who is mentioned in the thread above does not have contractors for Detroit or all cities.  They may say they do but check around, read other threads, lots of people have told us privately they don't and as such you should be careful.

Back to my main point, we almost gave up on our real estate investment dream due to poor managers and agents in the Metro Detroit/Detroit Market.  We went through quite a few of them.  Before throwing in the towel we ended up doing a massive research project.  Contacted ~20-25 local managers and asked them all the same questions, a very large number of questions.  Got all of their documents, compared everything.  We then selected 2 and split our portfolio. After 6-8 months there was a clear winner and we gave them all of our business. They have been our manager now for some years and we could not be happier.  We have done everything with them.  Lease, release, maintenance, full turns, bought homes, sold homes.

They provide services and information and data that no other local manager provides. I have talked to quite a few former clients of Autumn as well before and after I sent them to who we use and 100% of them are thrilled.  

Communication is beyond excellent. They are also investors and know what investors want/need and as such provide us with what we want/need.

Because of the high number of scamming/terrible management companies we are happy to talk to anyone who wants to ask us questions.  Investor to investor.  We can share our experience, answer questions and give our recommendations as well.  

Feel free to send us a message here.  We love helping out other investors and saving them from the pain we went through!

Detroit is a single family home king!

My husband and I have been investing in Detroit and the surrounding area for many years now and we have a nice size portfolio.

We have used a lot of different property managers/realtors/crews and most are complete garbage. No communication no reports no funds send. Some are straight up scammers. Had one send us photos of a “renovated house” and it turns out it wasn’t even photos of our house!

The last time we switched we did A TON of research. We reached out to 15 – 20 managers, created spreadsheets the whole 9 yards and decided to go with Tradewinds Development Group. The owner is active here on BP and is very knowledgeable and the communication has been rock solid for years.

I don’t want this to turn into an ad nor do I want to talk bad on an open forum about specific companies, but I can tell you we have seen some crazy stuff. Need to be careful. Even if you don’t go with them @scott m from Traddewinds needs to be on your shortlist. You will not regret talking to them and will learn a thing or two.

I am happy to say more about what I like or why we ran away from other companies in a direct message if need be but I am not comfortable talking bad about places that I haven’t used in years, in particular by naming them. Oh the complete BS we have seen is mind numbing.

Hi, some of my posts get banned when I mention specific people but as an active investor in the Detroit market I can help you with this question.  I have worked with ~20 different agents in the city ranging from 100% jerks (most of them) to a few rock stars.  The problem with a lot of agents is they have no clue about investing, they want the simple easy sale and who can blame them that is how they make money.  But there are a few that know this market really well, understand investments and can even help you manage, rehab post purchase.  So DM me if you want some recomdations and either I (Andrea) or my husband (Andrew) will email you back.  Ugh, and be careful of wholesalers in the area.  So many scams and people pushing their own product.  Detroit is fraught with scammers need to be careful!

NP.  I don't know what the rules are on here about suggesting others so if you want more specifics or have questions I am happy to answer them.  We talked too about 10 compaines, worked with 3 total, 2 were terrible like no communication, no reports, no mantenance so we learned to be very careful and wish we were like you and made a manager a higher priority lol.  anyway DM me if you have more questions happy to share our experience so you dont have to live it

Hi Stephanie, my husband and I use tradewinds development group.  the owner is on here as scott m.  before tradewinds we worked with 2 other companies and they were terrible.  we have been with tradewinds for about a year and so far so good.