Two days ago I received a couple of pieces of mail from the Jackson County government. One contained the deeds to three vacant lots i bought. The other was an envelope from the Community Development Department.
How nice of them to send me a welcoming letter, I thought. I was wrong. It was a citation for tall grass and refuse on these properties. Maybe the Jackson County government needs to hold workshops to have their various departments welcome new residents and investors? But that is neither here nor there for my immediate purposes.
How do I find a reliable service to send out to spruce up the lot? I don’t trust hiring someone from Craig’s List. I am hundreds of miles away and cannot possibly supervise whether the project got done. Where do I go to find a small company that can be trusted to have done what it is charging me for?
Maybe you can find someone on Fiverr or Task Rabbit that can do it. You could also do a google search for a trash/haul away company and maybe they can do it all.
On the flip side, I’d contact the department that sent you the letter and request a list of everyone they send those letters to. Those are your next sellers.
Hey @syasturi! Oh man, nothing like a citation to say “welcome to the neighborhood” right?
I’ve been in your shoes - owning property from far away is tricky. Have you tried getting recommendations from local realtors? They usually know all the reliable maintenance folks in town. The Chamber of Commerce can be surprisingly helpful too - those businesses tend to be legit since they’ve got a reputation to protect.
If you want to play it really safe, look up licensed companies on HomeAdvisor or Angi. And definitely ask them to send before/after pics! Most decent companies do this nowadays anyway since everyone’s used to documenting everything with their phones.
Good luck getting those lots cleaned up! Once you find a good service, hang onto their number - they’re quite valuable when managing property long-distance.
These are good ideas. I will call the Chamber of Commerce on Monday. If that doesn’t work, I will look people up on Home Advisor or Angi.
As for realtors, when I tell them that I buy tax delinquent properties, they turn green and vanish on me. So I have had to learn to function without them.
