All Forum Posts by: Colin Smith

Figured I'd chime in with my experience with Spartan.

I've also purchased a property with Spartan and I am experiencing something similar. I closed at the end of March and I still haven't received payments for moved in tenants. They leased it out at the end of July and basically made it clear to me my only option would be Section 8 which would have been fine if I had known that going in but it seemed like they went for it because they weren't able to rent it any other way. The only updates I get are when I pester Scott with emails. Whenever he gives me an estimated date for something, I just tack on a month or two because the dates he gives have never been accurate, or even close to accurate. Even during the closing process, I was always leading in the communication. The person I was communicating with left the company and I was sending emails to a nonexistent email for a week and a half before I had to reach out to Clayton here on BP to find that out.

​Overall, I'd rate the experience so far as inefficient and nerve-wracking. I've gotten no emails on major updates during the process, very hand-wavy timelines of the process which always seem to take longer than what I am told and no tenant for 4 months in what was supposed to be a hot rental market during a good time to find tenants, Spring/Summer. On top of that, even with a tenant in the property, payments aren't coming in. I am pretty disappointed with this whole process and to be honest, there is no way I'd buy another property from Spartan at this point. I don't think there's any excuse for this treatment. I get better service at McDonalds. My wife and I expected a much higher standard when we signed up with Spartan and it seems like they haven't managed the growth of their company properly in the past year.

@Cary F., could you PM me your lender? I am currently shopping around right now.

@Jennifer Ward, great analysis. Thanks for the information.

That's all great advice. Thanks for the tips! Being an out of state investor, finding a good property manager will make or break my investments. Finding a good property manager is the first order of business for me.

@Michael Swan, I completely agree about building up a rock-star team. Easier said then done I think. I plan on fully vetting whoever I choose to work with and if this first deal goes well for me, you can be sure I will use the same team again for future REI efforts I undertake. The more I read into it, the more I feel buy and hold properties for rental cash are a great counter balance to stocks so I am hoping to build up my rental portfolio within the next few years.

@Dean Muriby, that's an interesting point. When looking at deals, I am seeing taxes as a factor but a lot of properties I am seeing still have good cash flow despite the taxes. I'll be honest, I am not sure what "normal" taxes would look like since I have just started looking into REI markets but I'll start looking into it. Thanks for pointing that out.

@Mike D'Arrigo, thanks for posting the graph. The population decline does concern me which is definitely something I am considering when making my final choice. Being that I want to go for a buy and hold for cash flow, population is an important factor.

@Andrew Syrios, thanks! I am really enjoying my time on BP so far. What a great resource!

 Thanks! The wealth of information I've found on BP so far has been absolutely invaluable.

Well hopefully I can still get in. I have heard that the Indianapolis market is getting pretty saturated with out of state cash and investors.