All Forum Posts by: Alan Mackenthun

My wife and I are also Gophers.  My wife Comp Sci, me Civil Engineering.  That was a while ago.  I moved into software pretty quickly for all the opportunity.  We're now working on setting up the tech side of a start up locally.

I don't use anything now, but it's something I've looked at.  I'm not at the scale to afford the best, but something would be nice.  Many property management applications support work orders, but a mobile app would seem to be a good lightweight solution. 

Not sure I'd like to open a doc from someone I don't know, but I'd be happy to answer questions on this forum.  Where'd you go to school?

Not sure what's around the corner from the back door, but it has to go.  Other than that, like everyone else said, there needs to be some color added other than white and green either in the landscaping or on the house.  Replacing the front bushes with a white picket fence sounds great. 

You need to visit the properties, walk the neighborhood and judge for yourself.  I don't think you'll find A, B, C, .. neighborhood ratings anywhere.  A real estate agent cannot even estimate a rating as it could be considered steering (illegal). 

Anchor Bank does them locally here in the Twin Cities.

Hi Brandon,

We met a couple years ago at a meet up in St. Paul.  We've got 14 doors in the SW Twin Cities metro area (Eden Prairie, Shakopee, Prior Lake and Lakeville).  I'd be happy to show and tell.

Yeah, sharing your MLS ID and password is illegal and violates the MLS access agreement. If caught, the realtor or other licensee would lose their MLS access, their license, and would be liable for any damages in case someone booked a showing and robbed a property. It's just a really bad idea. Get your license or just use Zillow, realtor.com, trulia, or anyone of the numerous other sites with most mls data.

When I started I figured anywhere in the Twin Cities metro would be ok.  I ended up with one 39.2 miles away taking about 50 minutes to get to.  I had it for a number of years, but recently sold it closing on it last week.  For me, that's too far.  I'm looking to stay within about 20 miles from home.

There are a lot of owner occupants, but there's also an apartment building boom being built.  I invest here because I live here and am doing fine, but I'm sure it's like a lot of places.  You have to know the local area and who's your target market.  I bought one house in MPLS and will never do it again.  My money is staying in the burbs where I tend to find better renters and less over-bearing regulation and regulators.

The owner pays for vacancies. I don't own NNN properties (yet), but I certainly wouldn't sign a lease where other vacancies in a property that I have no control of increase my costs.