I want to start by saying that I would NEVER work with Michael Estes after what he put me through.

Our Agent-Client relationship started in February 2020. I was interested in working with him because he provided many services for real estate investment:

Showed me his investor spreadsheet which incorporated several KPIs that he used to determine whether a property was a good investment.
Mentioned Total Home Solutions, his low rate cost plus model for maintenance/remodel of properties.
Mentioned ETA Property Management, his property management company.

This one stop shop approach and his 20+ years of RE experience made it an easy choice for me to hire him as my Investment REA.

Within a matter of 12 months, I purchased 5 properties which totaled nearly $2M. He was making full commission on: the purchase side, THS remodeling/maintenance, and property management.

The issues I had, but were not limited to:

Slow lease process. Was told units were being listed, but many units went months vacant before hitting the market. With the housing shortage and high demand, that is unacceptable.
Being billed incorrectly for services, months after the jobs were complete. Longest invoice was 9 months after services rendered.
Maintenance requests not being responded to. Tenants would call me personally, sometimes weeks after they were submitted to ETA.
Missing multiple lease deposits for current tenants. I had to reimburse a tenant out of pocket due to mismanaged security deposit funds from ETA.
Leasing out units for lower rates than I approved.
Would avoid my calls and not return them.
Threatening me with legal action (liens/collections) once I wanted to part way from ETA.

After all this unfolded, I confirmed I was parting ways with ETA. He then proceeded to tell me that it was going to take some time to go through emails, leases, etc. As I imagined there were missing deposits, incorrect invoices for maintenance that he and his employee provided me non correlating totals on, and past due property management fees that were not collected since his employee was not collecting proper rent from several tenants for months to mask an error she made on several lease amounts.

When I pushed back on several items, he proceeded to tell me I will collect what is owed to me or send you to collections and put a lien on your property.

He runs each one of his businesses in a similar manner, disorganized and unprofessional. Maybe I am old fashioned and raised differently, but when I choose to do business with someone, it is because I trust them. I can say with confidence, Michael Estes is untrustworthy.

Beware of Michael Estes!

2022

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