GPS brands itself "Professional, Honest and Kind." I do believe they try to be kind. However, after having hired them to manage a rental home I own in Seattle, in my opinion, GPS is honestly the most unprofessional business I have run across in many years.
Fundamentally, I believe their business model is seriously flawed to be able to effectively manage rental properties. I wish someone would have explained this to me before I hired them.
GPS will not assign your property a dedicated person to manage your investment property. Rather, they have a "team" approach.
What that meant in my case was, instead of having one person with an in-depth understanding of my investment property, investment goals and tenants, there were several people who had little to no knowledge of my property. This resulted in having to explain the same thing over and over again to different people who were not effectively communicating with each other causing serious delays and multiple problems.
This lead to countless mistakes, including financial errors as well as major mistakes managing the property which caused my tenant to reach out to me directly resulting in major stress and concern and a lot of work for me.
GPS' business model didn't allow me to establish an informed, trusting relationship and build experience with one dedicated manager. It's like mailing a signed check for the total value of your investment property ($500k, $1million) to a general brokerage house instead of to one dedicated, informed, experienced financial advisor who knows your investment objectives, offers streamlined communication between the two of you and is clear and accountable for what they say and what they do.
In the four months I was in contract with GPS, every maintenance request the tenant made and every management request I made was met with frustrating problems. GPS was either unable to provide complete estimates for work that needed to be done, the vendors they hired failed to show up with no explanation as to why, deposits of rent were delayed or the amounts of deposits were incorrect, etc., all of this jeopardizing the tenants' well-being.
For example: I alerted GPS that if we were to renew the lease with the current tenants, the tenants had to be informed of any changes in their lease, specifically a rent increase, by the end of the month. However, no one at GPS had seen the house! I told GPS they needed to see the house before they could provide informed advice on the rent. Next thing I know, someone from GPS arrived at my tenants' door, unannounced and uninvited, to serve her family a formal notice of entry, during the pandemic when she had an infant at home which made her feel incredibly threatened and violated. All because GPS failed to simply schedule the visit with her.
GPS ended up offering my tenant and her family a month-to-month option to renew with a rent increase of over 26.6% which GPS never discussed with me, which I would never have approved.
An example a plumbing estimate from GPS:
"The estimate has come through, it is roughly $315 plus parts for a repair, if its the dishwasher, they may need an appliance person though."
This doesn't tell me who the vendor is or anything about the vendor, how soon the vendor can fix the issue, or, if an appliance person is needed, how does that affect the estimate?
I asked GPS all of these questions and never received any answers. Never. I expressed my concern to Nick He, owner of GPS, about the lack of important information on estimates which he never acknowledged. Never.
Eventually, I made a couple of calls from my home in Los Angeles and found a fully licensed plumber, with exceptional reviews, who fixed that particular issue for one-third of the amount in GPS' estimate.
However, the most frustrating and debilitating aspect of working with GPS wasn't the endless mistakes, but the total lack of acknowledgement of the issues with no plan or hope of resolving them. To me, they seemed determined and absolutely content to continue wasting time and making mistakes.
Case in point, I had to ask and wait for the Termination Agreement to our contract to be changed several times because GPS had incorrect sums on the legal document. Even after specifically pointing out the error to Nick He, I received two more versions of the Termination Agreement with the same numerical error, which if I hadn't noticed, would have financially benefited GPS and cost me.
In the end, GPS did refund all of the management fees I paid them. And while I appreciate the refund, it is impossible to assign a value on the relentless frustration and anxiety my tenant, her family and I had to contend with due to GPS' lack of professionalism.
If this review causes even one property owner to rethink hiring GPS, it was worth the time I took to write it. read more