All Forum Posts by: Alex SImon

I think...no, I KNOW that the reason I haven't changed PMs already is that I've been intimidated by the idea.  Despite the stuff I do for a living, the idea of screwing up my rentals is terrifying, and the distance between me and the job only makes it worse.

Thank you to everyone who chimed in on this.  I can now say for certain that I've been a terrible landlord, as I haven't ever talked to the tenants.  My newness has let this situation occur in the first place and even if the PM is the one screwing the pooch, I'm at fault for letting this happen.  So, thank you.  This is going to help me grow and on the next go round I'll be a lot more involved.

Right now though, I have no idea what to do about the pending evictions.  I've been completely hands-off and that's left me totally uninformed on the situation, other than that the PM is handling it and that there's a court date coming up for the first tenant.  At this point, since I can't physically show up for a court appearance (other side of the planet) and the PM is apparently getting this part done, am I better served by letting the PM continue with the process until it's done?  My feelings aside, he's got a system in place and I don't.  I'm going to press him for details on the matter when we talk (and my god, it is a nightmare trying to get so much as an email reply from this company).

I don't know what the PM does or doesn't know.  They're horrible about getting in contact with me in any way, and no matter what I don't feel comfortable working with them anymore after this.  I have a phone call scheduled for tomorrow morning with the PM where I plan to ask a lot of questions, though I highly doubt he's going to give me any real answers.  

As far as any maintenance that hasn't been done, there shouldn't be any.  But I'm on the other side fo the planet so there's no good way for me to verify this.

Will a new property manager even touch a property that has tenants in eviction?  

For the record, no this isn't going to cripple me.  I'm pretty flush at the moment so in a financial sense this is little more than a scratch.  But by god does it infuriate me!  Seeing something like this happen to something you worked so hard on, because some other guy decided to do a terrible job?  I'm seeing red.

The lesson I'm learning here is that I shouldn't trust so easily.  I need to assume that everyone I deal with is going to turn into a scumbag at some point, and I need to have recourse in place for when that happens.  This guy caught me with my pants down.  Shame on me.  But I will be absolutely certain that I'm ready for the next time this happens.

So for the past year or so I've owned two properties in Philly and they were going along pretty well with a few little hiccups here and there. Now all of a sudden, two of the three units stopped paying and the other just up and left without notice. My property manager has started eviction on the two non-paying tenants, but honestly I can't shake the idea that all of this happening at once was not a coincidence. Something is seriously wrong with this picture and I have no idea how to find out what it is. I'm a newbie, and until this very moment I had no idea just how inexperienced I was. Part of me thinks this is somehow an intentional move by my property manager, though I can't think of any conceivable motive for such a thing.

So I have no idea how to proceed here, and I would really appreciate some advice from any experienced landlords on the matter. I'm on the other side of the planet from my properties and I never thought I'd be dealing with evictions so soon, let alone two at once! Do I just let the manager do their jobs (assuming that I'm just being paranoid and they *aren't* setting out to ruin me)? Do I try to contact the non-paying tenants to find out more information? Anyone know anything that could be useful here?

I mean, the only conceivable motive for the property manager somehow orchestrating this is pure childish spite.  But I have see way too much of that in the world to put that possibility completely out of my mind.

Okay, addendum.  I can think of one possible motive for my property manager being the cause of all this:  pure, childish spite.  I had called him out for his lack of communication and responsiveness just a day or two before this all started to go down, and as much as it defies human reasoning he might be trying to teach me a lesson by, I don't know, telling all my tenants they don't have to pay rent or something.  God I feel ridiculous even typing that but if there's one thing I've learned it's that people have a bottomless capacity for being petty, hateful creatures.

So for the past year or so I've owned two properties in Philly and they were going along pretty well with a few little hiccups here and there.  Now all of a sudden, two of the three units stopped paying and the other just up and left without notice.  My property manager has started eviction on the two non-paying tenants, but honestly I can't shake the idea that all of this happening at once was not a coincidence.  Something is seriously wrong with this picture and I have no idea how to find out what it is.  I'm a newbie, and until this very moment I had no idea just how inexperienced I was.  Part of me thinks this is somehow an intentional move by my property manager, though I can't think of any conceivable motive for such a thing.

So I have no idea how to proceed here, and I would really appreciate some advice from any experienced landlords on the matter.  I'm on the other side of the planet from my properties and I never thought I'd be dealing with evictions so soon, let alone two at once!  Do I just let the manager do their jobs (assuming that I'm just being paranoid and they *aren't* setting out to ruin me)?  Do I try to contact the non-paying tenants to find out more information?  Anyone know anything that could be useful here?

My friend and I are looking to put together an LLC and structure it as a limited partnership. Is there anyone who can refer me to an attorney that can help me get this entity created in Florida? Anywhere in the Central Florida area is fine by me, it's all one big mess of roads and theme parks anyway.

Yeah, it's mostly virtual these days but eventually I'll move back to the states.  At this point I'm seeing if I can convince some of the decent-ish guys over here to stop buying race cars and start investing with me.  Intelligent money management doesn't really resonate with grunts, though.  Mostly because rental properties aren't painted cherry red with flame decals.

 Last time I talked to @Christophe about Ohio Cash Flow, he said he was a little on the fence about them, that the first property had gone well but that the second one had a lot of problems that stopped him from closing.  So it's a bit of a mixed bag, but this was a long time ago now, and this is of course second-hand through me since I haven't really worked with OCF myself.