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If your not happy in Seattle, I don't know what to tell you. I get it that its a coastal marine environment which can receive heavy fog but aren't their valley micro climates with more sunshine? My coworker in Charlotte was outta here the minute she got an offer to seattle and I would have done the same. Many other metro areas are closely located besides nature.. not so in Charlotte at all. It purely a cement landscape where you need to drive an hour to find any serenity whatsoever. There will be a lot about seattle you would miss because Charlotte just isn't there quite yet but It does offer a good family and work atmosphere which I believe to be the best reason to move to charlotte. The climate there isn't bad but its not great. The real estate in Charlotte is stagnant. Isnt it rising in Seattle? From that standpoint, your putting yourself in a bad position.
I know folks who love Seattle, but no one place is right for every person.
That being said, you need to either get your house on the market asap or find a good property management firm to take care of it for you.
To the OP, yes, it is an absolute necessity to find a GOOD property management firm to take care of your house and renters. I've had two property management companies handle my property over the years. The first time fortunately I was living within the same city. I was renting out an investment property. But it was still a NIGHTMARE. This firm rented my property to drug dealers, who destroyed it. It turns out there renters were friends of the property manager who had been bouncing these tenants from property to property. It took me forever to get a copy of the lease from the property manager, and when I did, I found the employment history and credit check were blank! I then also learned that during the course of the ten years or so this property manager was dealing with these tenants, part of that time one of them was in prison. Obviously the property manager knew all this, but let them live in my property anyway. Neighbors were constantly calling me at work about suspicius activity. I would immediately call my property manager, but she would lie to me and say nothing was going on. It took me awhile to finally learn the truth. When I finally met those tenants, they were in handcuffs. That's when I saw that they had turned my bathroom into a meth lab, and there were holes in the walls all over the place where they were stashing stuff. After they FINALLY moved out, they broke into my place. It was one thing after another. I came to realize there had been some sort of deal between these tenants and the property manager. For one thing, I think they were supplying her with drugs, and possibly cutting her in on their drug profits. It was a very tough lesson for me.
The second time I hired a property manager was when I moved across the country and needed someone to look after my property. I did my homework that time to make sure I was hiring someone with a good reputation. And this person turned out to be absolutely excellent, the polar opposite of that first experience. She would provide me details on all prospective tenant so I could have a say in who she would rent to. And anytime someone moved out, she'd have the place re-rented in a matter of a couple days! She rented only to solid individuals who took excellent care of my property. So good (and great) property managers are out there, but so are horrible ones. I've had both! Do your homework before you hire one!
Agree with the above. It's all about the quality of tenant, whether absentee landlording can work out. I have lived in the Charlotte area long enough to collect a small portfolio of rentals. The tenants are all long-term, they like their houses, and take good care of them. (It probably helps that I have raised rent sparingly and they know they can't find anything cheaper.) If something breaks I call a handyman - so it doesn't matter all that much whether I'm nearby or not.
As for Seattle vs Charlotte, I have visited Portland several times in different seasons and can make some comparison. Charlotte has more moderate winters, with more sunlight. It's at a lower latitude, so the sun is higher in the sky in the winter. This area is slighly in the rain shadow of the Appalachian mountains, and during the winter the weather moves in a broadly western/northwestern flow, so that helps too.
Summers are more thunderstorm-ish (this is a subtropical region after all) but we don't have the oppressive heavy humidity of the deep south.
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