Look upon my work, ye real-estate concentrators, and despair...
"Beware the Foreclosure Allure
Redbrick's Model of Scattered Bets Is Cautionary Tale
By JAMES R. HAGERTY
Many investors have been tempted by the idea of buying foreclosed homes in bulk from banks, at a steep discount. But the experiences of a Washington, D.C.-based property investment firm, Redbrick Partners LLC, show it can be difficult to manage a large number of single-family rental homes scattered across a metropolitan area.
[redbrick] Reuters
Redbrick's business of buying up properties in cities like Trenton, N.J., and outsourcing rentals and maintenance has proved difficult to execute.
Though Redbrick was never in the business of buying foreclosed homes, the firm in recent years bought hundreds of properties in working-class areas of East Coast cities including Baltimore, Philadelphia and Trenton, N.J. It hired local managers to handle rentals and maintenance.
Now Redbrick, formed in 2003, has concluded that it is too costly to manage those homes and is trying to sell most of them. Tom Skinner, one of Redbrick's managing partners, notes that fixing leaky toilets and other common problems is much more complicated in a diverse array of homes than in an apartment building where fixtures are standard and the manager can walk from unit to unit..."
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB122222286574070071-lMyQjAxMDI4MjIyNDIyMjQyWj.html
I'm sure that working for a landlord can be a real bitch sometimes.