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Comment by gigatexal | Hacker News Reader

How do you vet contractors? What’s the fee per month? Is the subscription a lock in? Do you find and vet and place tenants? I’m interested: Alex at alexandarnarayan dot com

Basically if you can beat the 8% per month and 50% first months rent my current manager takes I’d jump easily. Even more importantly I’ve a tenant that pays religiously on the first of the month. But I don’t get a deposit until the 11th or the 12th. Can you guys beat that?

What are the chances I can get on the phone and talk to the person that would be overseeing my property? How do you convey trust to owners when you don’t live in the areas you serve?

Edit: the fee structure is insanely attractive.

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We do not take over property management duties at all outside of maintenance (i.e. No rent collection, no filling of units, evictions, advertising, etc)

As far as vetting contractors, we ensure they have appropriate licensing, bonding and insurance per local requirements and also vet their existing social media reviews (looking for 4+ stars). Most of our clients provide us their rolodex of contractors to work with and we can vet their responsiveness and quality that way.

Ahh so only maintainence. Dang. Still a nice service but I don’t get a discount from the current property manager for him just collecting rent on my behalf as I used him mostly to get my current tenant but now the 8% a month is torture.

You have to look at it like a retainer charge. Most of the time, what they do is minimal but when something happens, they will give your property a ton of time. I think property managers are chronically underpaid because the barrier to entry is so low. The best run firms I've seen are one or two people that charge a premium but cap themselves at say 150 units. Then you get their full attention and care all the time. The hard part is they're never taking on new clients because they're never losing old clients.

It's a lot like good CPAs, good lawyers, or good family practice physicians.

Also I couldn’t afford to switch to you guys and you guys fold. How well funded are you? What are the chances you’ll tank in a year or more? Or less?

I don't want to get too specific. We're a seed stage company and we're on track for profitability in a few months with plenty of gas left in the tank.

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