All Forum Posts by: Allan Kuaana

Great Jones managed three of my St. Louis properties in 2020.  At first they seemed "Great".  Initially, when I had my first property in St. Louis, I was able to contact the property manger in the area who replied promptly and answered my questions.  The ledgers were a bit confusing at first, but doable if I put effort into making sense of it.  Everything was fine, the rent was coming in on time even with pandemic just starting to affect our country.  

I purchased a second property and everything was fine, except that the representative left the company and there was no live person in the area.  Rent was being paid and I still had to painstakingly keep track of the transactions, which sometimes made no sense or didn't add up.  Phone calls to Great Jones are non-existent.  Emails are not promptly answered and when there is a response, sometimes the communication would be better if it were done verbally to better explain and answer follow up questions. 

A third property was purchased, this time it was vacant.  And it took Great Jones some time to have it rented.  I gave them the benefit of the doubt considering the pandemic and trying to find a good tenant who isn't trying to take advantage of the renter moratorium. They did finally get it rented.

In 2021, the tenants from the two other properties decided to not renew their lease. I decided it was time for a switch in PM's.  I went with PM #2 after receiving a recommendation from my trust worthy source.  I was happier with the communication, however it was quickly becoming evident that PM #2 was overwhelmed.  I probably got in too late.  Two months later I switched to PM #3, who is proving to be a much better PM.

Problem is PM#2 did not notify the tenant in my third property of the PM change and thought Great Jones was still the PM.  Thus, the tenant sent their first two months of rental payments to Great Jones.  Both the tenant and I emailed Great Jones, because it is the only way to contact them.  Two different representatives replied with conflicting messages.  One representative told me that because my account with them was closed, they could only send the payments back to the tenant.  Another representative told my tenant, that they were waiting on me for direction. 

After the tenant and I spoke and exchanged the email replies we received from Great Jones, we both replied to Great Jones, pointed out the contradictory messages, and asked them to resolve the matter.  That was three weeks ago, and we haven't received a single reply from Great Jones, other than the packaged response of "We received your messaged and someone will respond to you soon."  Since then I've sent another message, but still haven't received a response.

For anyone considering Great Jones as their PM, heed the warnings from others that have posted here.

@Max Householder Hello and thank you for the reference.

@Davartay Miller Thank you for the reference. 

@David Ounanian Thank you for reaching out.

Could anyone recommend a decent property management company for SFR in the St. Louis MO area?

@Kai Sato-Franks

I believe that one cannot possibly acquire great wealth without using OPM.

I used “good” debt to purchase 6 cash flowing properties this year and am looking for two more. There is no possible way I could have achieved this by paying strictly cash for them. It would have taken me many many years to build up the cash reserves to get this far.

Of three properties, I've got two new tenants in two homes, one in early April and the other just last week.  I do have one property that his been sitting for about month now and remaining patient.  Hoping for the best for everyone else out there.  

What a great question to remind us to make sure we got those reserves in order, especially during these times.

I am very fortunate to have retired from my government job in December and left only 1% of my accessible savings in the stock market (just for the fun of it).  I have started working on two buckets.  First bucket is a self-directed IRA containing 4 FTD's, one all cash property and one leveraged, which is under contract at the moment. I am hunting for a second leveraged property in there as well. Second bucket is cash available outside of the SDIRA, where I have one property under contract that will be leveraged as well.  I am looking for two more leveraged properties in that bucket alsol.  All in all, I am still cash heavy in my young real estate investing life. 

Once all properties are attained in both buckets, I will still have a solid amount of reserves.  Not factoring a potential large repair cost, which shouldn't happen since the properties were fully rehabbed, I estimate to have 60 months of reserves at that moment.  Doing these calculations I see that's a lot and I might consider trying to squeeze another property into the mix.  Will have to cross that bridge once I get there. 

Currently, I think I am in a very good place to wait and see what is the best course of action

@Makani Romano aloha and mahalo!

@Brandon R. Aloha and thank you.