All Forum Posts by: Maranda Tucker

@Samuel Gaddis Hey Samuel! Welcome to BP! Do you live in CLT? Are you interested in working with investors or have investing experience?

@Ryan Spath we switched from agent-led only showings to TT 2 years ago and it has been a game changer. We have never experienced push back. Sometimes people do not understand how a digital lockbox works, but a simple call fixes that! 

We manage over 300 properties in CLT and haven't had any issues. 

 Consistently keeping tenants for 5-10 years is so great! What are you doing (or not doing) to keep your tenants for so long? Our average tenant stay is 3 years- but most of the time it is because our tenants buy their own home.

@Drew Sygit For your RentReady Bids - how many will you actually give? Do you allow owners to turn their own units? 

We are consistently working hard to keep our turn time to 8 days, but getting owner approval can take up to a week or more sometimes. I have been trying to find ways to minimize decision time (like maybe through educational videos on this?). 

Hey BP community,

I wanted to share a lesson from the trenches of property management that might save some of you a big headache—especially those of you trying to reduce days on market by showing properties early.

We usually never show a property until it’s 100% move-in ready. That means: all repairs complete, cleaned, and ready for someone to walk in with a suitcase. But recently, we made an exception—and we paid the price.

We had a townhome turning over that was almost there—just needed some minor paint touch-ups. The property showed well, so we thought: Let’s go ahead and show it, get a jump on leasing. A tenant toured it, applied right away, got approved, and was excited to move in.

Fast forward to post-repair walk-through... and suddenly the tenant is unhappy.
Turns out, their expectations for what those "paint touch-ups" would look like didn’t align with what was agreed upon between us and the owner. They wanted a full repaint in certain areas, and weren’t happy with what was done—even though, from our perspective, it was perfectly reasonable for a rental in this price range.

We managed the situation, but it created unnecessary friction before the lease even began.

And honestly, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this play out. Anytime we’ve shown a property before it’s fully move-in ready, there’s a higher chance for tenant misalignment, complaints, or second-guessing—sometimes even lease break requests.

So here’s what we do instead:

✅ Minimize turnaround time as much as possible
✅ Start advertising about 2 weeks in advance to build an interest list
✅ Once the property is fully ready, we blast that list to schedule showings quickly

It might seem like waiting delays your leasing process—but in reality, it prevents unnecessary conflict and helps start the landlord-tenant relationship off on the right foot.

Curious to hear from other investors or PMs—do you show properties before they’re move-in ready? Have you run into similar situations? I know some markets are more centered around student housing and has the ability to pre-lease (I am envious)

I have worked with a smaller PM company (100 - 150 units)  and a more mid-sized company (300-350 and growing)... What questions are you looking to have answered? I have aa ton of suggestions and ideas (LOL), but not sure what you are looking for!

In an ideal world, property manager should be coordinating the HVAC servicing with the tenant and the tenant should not be communicating with you at all. I'm not really sure why you even have a property manager if you are still doing this much work.

I would be considering transitioning my property to a PM who will handle it all completely OR self managing and saving yourself the money. 

On another note, regular bi-annual HVAC servicing is great for maintaining system efficiency and catching common issues early, but it wouldn’t necessarily prevent something like a valve core failure. 

I totally agree! As a property manager, my biggest fear when I get a message from an agent is "hey, I just got my first time investor under contract and now they need a PM!" 

...  few times, I had to be the bearer of bad news that rents will not go for what the investor was expecting, or had to navigate through a poor investment with the owner simply because the agent was unaware and I was looped in later in the process. 

My favorite part of my job is partnering with Agents and their clients as they hunt for that next deal. I have 7 properties we are prepping to list for rent once they close this month and I had the privilege of sharing the professional PM perspective throughout that decisioono making process! Getting tenants into those properties will be so rewarding. 

HEY BP! thought I’d share a quick Q2 rental market update from what I’ve been seeing lately on the ground.

Vacancies are taking longer to fill right now. Homes that used to lease in under two weeks are now sitting for 3–4 weeks, sometimes longer. According to the MLS, the average days on market for rental listings in Charlotte is currently 75 days—which is wild compared to what we were seeing just a year or two ago. Renters have more options and they’re definitely being more selective.

Rent growth has also cooled. In many areas, rents are flat or slightly down, especially in B-class neighborhoods and outlying suburbs. We’re occasionally recommending slight price reductions to fill units faster. That said, higher-end homes in hot areas like South End, Dilworth, and NoDa are still moving pretty quickly at strong rates.

Investor activity is still there, but much more cautious. Most of the buyers I’m speaking with right now are out-of-state investors looking for long-term, cash-flowing rentals. The days of banking on rapid appreciation feel like they’re behind us for now.

One trend I’ve noticed gaining traction: co-living. I’ve had a noticeable increase in conversations around room-by-room leasing, shared housing models, and how to structure multi-tenant arrangements. It’s not widespread in Charlotte yet, but the interest is there—especially with housing affordability continuing to be a concern for renters.

Another thing to watch: new construction townhomes being marketed to investors. A lot of them look good on paper, but once you factor in HOA fees and lower durability finishes, they don't always pencil out. I'm also seeing more rentals linger on the market when they're priced based on outdated comps.

Curious what things look like in your market—are renters getting more selective? Are you seeing more investor interest or conversations around co-living?

Ohhhh I like this!