Rental Property and Living out of State? (Tampa, Century: condos, hotel)

[LivingonLI]

I left the Tampa area a few years ago for work and miss the area. As prices have dropped, I've become more interested in buying a condo to use for weekends/vacations. Ideally, I would rent the condo from November to March and have the rest of the year to use as I want. I wouldn't be looking to make money, just to cover as much of my annual costs as possible.

Does anyone rent seasonal condos in the area? I would want it to be as easy as possible (management agency, low maintanance building).

Is this a ridiculous idea? Does anyone do anything like this? I know it would be cheaper to just stay in a hotel when I visit, but I'd appreciate any thoughts.

Thanks!

[SLCPUNK]

I've had an out of town rental and it was very costly and ended in a two year lawsuit (I'm still not done.)

PM me if you have questions. I would NEVER use a mgt company to handle one of my properties EVER again.

[JennySquirrel]

I noticed this was a little older post but I have to comment on this one. I owned a vacation rental condo in Hawaii for 7 yrs. I went through 3 management companies and let me tell you it was a nightmare. I was forever getting bills from the management company for things the "tourists" stole. You know like ironing boards, dishes, pans,etc. Now obviously it wasn't a toursist stealing an ironing board. I have yet to see a tourist return from Hawaii with brooms and ironing boards on the plane. It was the maids they hired. This was constant.

I went to visit once to check up unannounced and I walked in on some coked out looking guy who was the "housekeeper". All the things we had bought to replace the last things stolen were all gone again. I had a phone in there this time that was GREEN with a dirty twisted cord. Towels were all gone and replaced with some worn out dollar store junk with holes. It was a total embarrassment. The last time we were there we spent 4K on new towels and freshly stocked the kitchen and all new linens. All gone and replaced. My prints on my walls were all replaced with swap meet garbage.

I had them hire someone to cut down the counter and put in tile counters. Well, they hired someone's buddy and he cut the water line and it drained into the unit below me and then he tiled my drawer shut. I had to pay for all the damages to the condo below.

The big one came when I had Century 21 (Big Island) managing it and decided to renovate it for the 2nd time since I owned it. (ocean front units get hit hard with salt spray) anyway, they hired one of the workers from Century 21's hubby. I sent 10K as my deposit. It was supposed to be a couple of weeks. Well, a month later she (Audry) calls and says she needs another 10K. The sliding glass door is going to be more. Long story short....I get a bill in the mail for my electric $600, then I get a phone bill for $480 when I have long distance blocked. So I called the the phone company to ask them what the *87 charges are for and they tell me that it is to see who called them. Well I had 450 of those charges. After more investigating and a flight out there I found out that the Century 21 employee had her 13 relatives living in my condo and they were running drugs out of it but didn't get caught. The *87 calls were all in the middle of the night when they were dealing their drugs and she tried to tell me it was the construction men. They lived in my unit almost 2 months and stole everything and put holes in my walls and never did one bit of work.

I lost the 10K money I paid them+ the lost rent, plus all the things they stole and Century 21 kept the lady as their employee. I was told by a lawyer from Hawaii that I would never won the case since I was on the mainland and a local judge would never let me win. The lawyer told me "as much as I would love to have you hire me, I have to be honest, you won't win this case". I bet if you call Century 21 Big Island on Alii St. Audry still works there and is looking for another person to rip off.

I know that is Hawaii and this is Florida but let me just say it is really, really hard to trust a person with your investment. I mean, I used Century 21 and who would ever think they would allow this to happen to a client and then walk away from it?

Just be careful. Our experience was a nightmare.