All Forum Posts by: Alex Applebee

Why didn’t they do a test patch with the paint before slathering it up on the wall? I would want to keep the peace, but a bad paint job is a pain to fix in either your time or money. Take a look at how bad it is first. They aren’t giving me a lot of confidence that they will do a good job repainting it themselves. But what about their deposit? If they have caused an expensive fix, I would be taking it out of that (as specified in my lease and it is legal in my state, to my understanding.)

I have this sort of thing clearly spelled out in my lease. At move in they also get paperwork to line out anything they view as damaged or in need of repair so that I can address it. 

Good luck! 

@Patrick M. On the cozy dashboard it shows the payment as completed and deposited. It had been estimated for December 7th, but somewhere on their FAQ it had said that it can take another 24 hours from it showing as completed to actually being deposited in the account, so I waited until the 8th to contact them/even start wondering what is going on. 

I was pretty thrilled with it all initially. I liked the application process for the tenants, I like their expense tracking. I think it all has potential, but the difficulty in getting answers when something significant is going wrong is enough to reverse my feelings on the company, unfortunately. 

I’m glad to hear others have better experiences. Maybe I’ll just keep my tenant on there until the lease is up, and switch to another company with the next units and lease....depending on if when/how this gets resolved tomorrow.

Luckily I was not depending on this deposit for anything, good lesson on always having cash reserves! 

Hi! I just wanted to put my problem out there and see if anyone has had any similar issues. I currently have a rent payment from my tenant floating around somewhere besides my bank account. This is a new rental and after some research I decided to try out cozy for online payment, and I was aware of the 5-7 day processing time through ACH. Not too big of a deal. I paid for the expedited payment, but for the tenant's first payment this is not an option. Again, no big deal. 

So my tenant paid her rent on the 1st. On the evening of the 7th I still have no payment, although it states "completed" on the website. So on the 8th when I get to late afternoon and it is still not in my account, I look for the customer service number. They do not have one. They have an email and standard business hours 7 days a week, supposedly. The lack of being able to call someone was a little frustrating, but if they offer prompt e-mail service I figured it would be fine. This is NOT the case. 

I got my first response on the 8th and I sent a reply e-mail following their advice and asking if things were resolved on their end. I did not get another response until 436 PM the following day after my fourth e-mail I when I got frankly pissed at the total lack of response and told them I would be writing poor reviews and sending a complaint to BBB if I didn't get any sort of response. Remember I am missing a rent payment here that says "completed." this seems an issue you would want to handle promptly. Well that got a response, finally. Unfortunately, this second e-mail just parrots the first. They suggested that I had put in the wrong bank account number. I can't verify this on the site because under my bank accounts after entry it only shows the last four of the bank account and which bank it is, which all displays correctly. I had re-entered my information on Friday and asked for verification on their end and not gotten any information or follow up. 

Since this was unhelpful I called Chase this morning (phone support, like a real company.) They said that a deposit had been made from cozy into my account on Friday via ACH, but then cancelled on cozy's end (so maybe not incorrect info if chase had my info? maybe not?) Being a weekend they couldn't get a response from ACH but gave me a tracking/tracing # for the transaction and suggested I needed to talk to cozy and then if that went nowhere follow up with them on Monday. I e-mailed cozy with this information and the trace #. Again this is day 3 of trying to get a real response from cozy and they supposedly have 7 day/week business hours support via e-mail. In the process of typing this I refreshed my e-mail and almost 8 hours later I have a response that they will check with engineering tomorrow. This is also the third person from the company that has responded (one e-mail from each, I get being out of the office, weekends, etc, but maybe if they would respond a little earlier than the very end of the day we could resolve this with one person and move on. or don't advertise 7 day a week support and I would have waited until Monday.). 

Anyways, the biggest issue I am having is the lack of customer support more than anything. I certainly will not use them again after this and will probably swap my tenant over to another payment process in a month or so. I may as well have had the tenant mail me the payment!

 Many of the houses in this neighborhood are owner occupied. based on my previous houses I know I can do this property nicely, but cheaply. I am still doing new kitchen cabinets/marble or granite, nice new windows, and will stage the property. I am not doing new tile showers, expanding the master bathroom or kitchen as I would going for the 1.1. i am basing my finishes around other closed comps in the neighborhood. The 1.1 house had laminate counters throughout. So I am actually going slightly nicer than that. I just know over doing this house would be a mistake. It is a 4/2 in a great school district so we will see.

 Those median gross rents are super low. My husband is working as a property manager with Towbes Group out here at one of their complexes (multi-family) and their smallest 700 square ft units rent for $2900/month. For your basic apartment. $1400 might rent you a room somewhere. It is insane!! And even with the rents it really isn't a great place to be a landlord unless you bought the place in the 90's or before. My husband and I are going to go out and look at lexington, ky. Much more affordable it seems and maybe we can afford to fund our own flips and do more houses. We'll see.

No debt service on the property (except for what I pay to borrow the money from him) but he still wants in and out, understandably. 

Hi! To clairfy 60 k and 899 are my "worst case scenario awful things happened" numbers. My ARV closed comps actually range around 889k for a house nearby on a busy road that is a fixer in better condition than this house but extremely dated and ugly with one less bedroom that really needs a full remodel, to a comp that has a better backyard, totally livable but sort of your 1990's special (lots of laminate counters, looks kinda like a motel 6) that sold for 1.1million. That is a big range but I feel safe at 899k for my "oh crap" number. 70% is a great guideline ESPECIALLY on cheaper homes, but even with my "oh crap" numbers I have around 50k profit. With construction costs out here being similar to what I paid in AZ (really!), I am comfortable breaking the 70% rule on that.

For some background my first rehab I added a master bathroom, bedroom, breakfast nook into the existing footprint of a house and basically re-did everything but the roof and made lots of expensive mistakes along the way for 63k in construction costs. This rehab isn't nearlly as extensive.

I am actually hoping to spend about 40k on rehab and put in on the market for 925k, which put me closer to 95k profit. Which if we look at how much it costs to even get into a rehab here isn't exactly a home run house. But it fell in my lap so I sure wasn't going to say no. 

Having done 2 flips I know the general costs of most things by now. I don't use a general contractor, I sub everything out myself. If I have time tonight I will do a general breakdown of what I think my costs will be. 

 The roof has to be replaced, half of it is missing in the back. That will probably cost 5-6k Labor and materials. I usually get my floors from floor and decor. Check them out, cheapest flooring and tile i have found.

 Yes, it isn't even livable. That is why my husband and I are seriously considering moving back east when this is done. We want to have a house with some room for horses etc, and the starting point for that out here is in the 2 million range! I love santa barbara, but it is too expensive!

 Great school district, very cute neighborhood, standard 60's and 70's ranch houses. Nothing fancy. Comps range from 900's to 1.1 million. I wanted to aim for the high 900's and do a little nicer rehab, but as I said, having to consider my investor's wishes we are just making it basic and going for high 800's.

 I'm hoping to spend 40k on rehab but you know how it goes, always runs more. So lets say 60k. it will probably run me another 50k to sell it. So the numbers are big but it really isn't like a home run deal when you think of such a high dollar house. That's why I say the market is weird here.