All Forum Posts by: Audrey Ezeh

@Shayla Fletcher I don't have enough properties to justify paying for software so I use vertical rent. It's a cloud based property management and accounting program for landlord. I love it. It's better than an excel file because it generates the annual reports for you. No affiliation with the company, I'm just a happy user.

@Audrey Ezeh Have you ever had to serve an eviction while not in the local area? If not, do you have any idea what that would look like using (or not) online property management software?

@Omar M. @Audrey Ezeh @David Freeman If you are looking for free option like Cozy or TenantCloud with many other features to go with it, I'd love to talk to you all more about Unitdash. We offer a full tenant screening package including a full credit report, background checks and eviction history..... and it's free to join =)

Good morning BP,

My wife and I closed on a six unit yesterday after a successful 1031 exchange using @Dave Foster and his group. The process took 84 days from putting the Boston property up for sale using @Charlie MacPherson and his team, selling the house on the 31st of August, to closing on our six unit on 08 Sep. 

- We sold our house for almost 54k over asking price in Boston thanks to Charlie and his awesome knowledge of the market. We purchased our 6 unit with 5 out of 6 units full and prorated rent for the month of Sep. 

- We got a deal of 4.8 percent on the commercial loan, and found a great local lender to support our growing business needs.

Some background as to why we sold. We were losing at least 400 dollars a month on our Boston house PITI, since the rents were short, but made up for it in solid appreciation and great timing. Also, the property management was weak to say the least and I was tired of dealing with their system.

The property we exchanged for needs a solid 10k in work to get the insurance to come down, but passes all inspections. We have talked to our property manager to draw out a plan to fix the property using a 1000 dollars of the NOI. Even with that we are going to making 1500 a month after commercial loan, property manager, taxes, insurance (paid for the next year using the 1031).

BP has helped our company grow from 200 dollars a month, on one door, to 3400 a month, in six months and we are just getting started. 

To all that are trying to get there follow the numbers, not your heart and you will get there faster!!

Time to contemplate the next move!!!!

Thank you,

Johnny

Hey all! Just sharing my story with the hope that it will light a fire under some of you, or keep the one you've already got burning hot. Here we go: 

It all started with a small loan of a million dollars from my dad....okay, okay only kidding!!

Last year I purchased a 4 plex with good amount of money down (20-25%) in East Hartford Connecticut. PP was 200K, and rents were at $3605 a month. I sat on the property for a few months, felt out the tenants and have since then asked a few tenants to leave, or increased their rent as a way to encourage them to find new housing. In the last 11 months or so, I have rehabbed two apartments (10-12K of material, labor done by yours truly) and am now sitting at gross rents just shy of $4,110. Recap - I got a 4 plex, put in 10-12K of rehab to get out an extra 6K per year. I like that ROI!

Most recently I purchased a SFR in Windsor Locks, CT. I'll admit, I'm a huge car buff, and I wanted the place for the generously sized 4 car garage....well, once we got to the inspection period, I didn't think the numbers would work, so I started to back out. The listing agent made magic happen though, and got the sellers to drop the price 60K! I figured that the house needed 30-40K worth of work. This property quickly became a home run deal.

Even though I'm a car guy and wanted that garage badly, I knew I had to mortgage the rest of the house with it...but, what 24 year old in their right mind needs a 4 bedroom house for himself? So guess who got himself a couple of house mates?? This guy! The mortgage and then some is covered, and now I am sitting on two properties, both with what I would consider good equity. One I will likely never sell, the other is more of a live-in-for-free-while-making-a-profit-flip. 

At this point, the money I make as a landlord is getting dangerously close to the money I was taking home from my W2 job as an entry level architect in training in downtown Hartford. I've decided to put that career on hold to develop a property management company here in north central CT. There is no way I could "retire" and sit on my butt for the next 60 years! Plus, I want to buy more cash producing assets, and be my own boss....that takes money! ;)

Here's to financial freedom, my friends!! 

Filipe

@Omar M.

Was looking into Cozy but saw found something disconcerting

"Alex Reiz said:

We have been using Cozy for our rental properties in regards to rent collection. Initially, their system was great and would not allow a Tenant to make partial payments; it would only allow a Tenant to pay all or none of the Rent, which was great and was one of the reasons we started using their service. However recently they have changed their system which now allows Tenants to make partial payments, which we do not like at all. There is no option on the receiving side in order to only allow only full payments, we find this to be a waiting nightmare if an eviction ever came up. We are especially unhappy with the service now, considering that was one of their highly touted features when they first started offering it.

Does anyone know of any other online payment service which only allows for full payments or at least allows the Landlord to chose between full and partial payments?" 

Here's some other PM softwares people have been using:

“I am playing around with tenant cloud. I like erentpayment and the fees are cheap.” Jim Adrian

Rentecdirect

Drew Bonnor said, “rentecdirect.com. This software is so affordable and has features like: automatic payments from your tenants bank account, tenant screening, publishing vacancies to sites such as realtor, zillow, Craigslist, etc., and keeps individual spreadsheets for each of your properties. Give it a look!”

Guy Varble said, “I use a property management software called R E N T E C D I R E C T and I just click the "syndicate" button and my property gets blasted out everywhere. Since I've been uning this for the past couple of years I have never put up a sign or ad or anything. It costs about $15.00 a month and is what I use to manage all aspects of my rentals.”

Unitdash – “Unitdash is a free to use property management platform for landlords and property managers. We pride ourselves on our users being able to sign up and hit the ground running. There is no required setup or setup fees. We have all of the features you expect and many nice to haves like custom online rental applications, in-app text messaging, integrated postal mail services and more.

Our online tenant portal allows your tenants to pay rent online and submit maintenance requests for free.” According to Anthony Ascuitto the developer

Cons: it’s new and not established.

Their claim: “We make money on online payments, background checks, and other integrated services by charging a small markup. We are not a beta product, we are just able to deliver a similar solution at a much cheaper price!”

ERentPayment

Clay Owens said: I just set up ERentPayment last week and they give you an option to accept partial payments or not.
“I am playing around with tenant cloud. I like erentpayment and the fees are cheap.” Jim Adrian

Buildium – Property management software

“The current software I use is Buildium.com, the software is one of the more inexpensive softwares to get for your management systems at $40.00 a month up to 200 units and then the price bumps to $200.00 a month. This software has some hidden fees in ACH transfers, which are charged to the property manager for every ACH transfer a total of $.50 and could be more depending on the days it takes to transfer. If you have a lot of properties this can add up quickly!” Peter Mckernan

“I have been using buildium for 2 months now managing 14 units. It's great for costs, budgets and the money management. It allows all units or properties to stay separate or combine by owner. The online rent collection has saved me a ton of time and effort.” Blake Garcia

“I used Buildium and it's a great software for starting out. It just doesn't make sense to pay around $50 a month to manage two units. It wouldn't cost too much more to hire a property manager and they would do all the work for you.

There are services available for screening that won't cost you a dime or require any effort on your part. Free online payment options are available or you could have the tenant set up direct deposit into your account for free. All of these options take less time than it would to set up Buildium, they don't require upkeep, and they won't cost you anything.” Nathan G

Pros: mentioned often on BP so commonly used
Cons: Hidden fees that add up
Cost: Starting at $45 / month, additional fees for features like ePay, tenant screening, 1099 eFiling

Appfolio - Software used for property management

“The next software that is pretty expensive is out of the gate is Appfolio.com, which charges $200.00 fee. This service does not take any money for ACH transfers and the software does charge an extra amount for building a website for your company (this is optional).” Peter Mckernan

“I have to say, they have a lot of cool things, but their accounting system is awful. That alone was a deal breaker. They told me that I would have to manually enter every single charge I do on the credit card for the business manually. If you use quickbooks and download the transactions from your bank, you know how much time that saves you every month. They also force you into working in their molds and expect you to adapt to their software. Most of the time are small compromises, but still annoyances.” Rafael Floresta

“My PM uses Appfolio (which seems, on here, to have it's share of fans and detractors) so it's easier and quicker for me to login and review rent collections, expenses, invoices, etc. I can't speak to maintenance management or anything else like that but now that I've had a PM with a cloud solution that has an owner portal, I don't think I'd want to go back. At the very least it would save you and your partner time with owners who are similar to me calling you up with questions that they could get the answers to online.” Andrew Johnson

“I use Appfolio out of santa barbara, ca its definitely not free and my property mgmt company passes those costs down to me which I think is around 50-60 bucks a month based on number of units under the service.

I am able to see all reports from rent rolls, cash flow statements / trailing 12 month cash flow, tenant ledgers, maintenance requests, dialog between tenants and mgmt staff, resolutions to maintenance requests, move in pictures, move out pictures, or video, and many more features.

What I like is that it allows the vendors to be in a dialog/text/chat box so they are prepared (vendor) prior to job assignment with lockbox codes, scope of work and pictures before they even go to the site so we dont waste time figuring things out and run up a huge $$$ bill for lack of efficiency.” Albert Bui

Pros: mentioned often on BP
Cons: accounting module is very weak, expensive for small operations
Cost: $1 per unit, per month plus an onboarding fee (equal to two months of service). Note that there is a $200 minimum monthly fee. App Folio offers a 15 day free trial.

Rent Manager – PM software
“Rent Manager has a pretty solid maintenance feature. I can create workorders and assign them individually to specific vendors or handymen. Those guys can then view their individual workorder lists from their mobile devices. When they have completed each workorder they can close them out and add comments detailing their scope of work. I am able to add/remove/edit/reassign workorders anytime.

All closed workorders are saved and can be cross referenced by tenant, property, or unit at any time from anywhere. Very handy.” – Ryan Murdock
“We have been using Rent Manager for years and its works very well for us. It can do as much or as little as you need, it is very affordable, and if you pick the cloud version (what we use) it is very convenient. Owners love having a portal to access their property information and performance in real time. “ Ante Vujic

TenantCloud “I do all of that with TenantCloud and have closed my paid account with AF. I only have 22 properties (all homes), but it works great. I do applications, listings to zillow and others, website, payments, accounting, maintenance, reports and its all free. I am still waiting for the got ya as they are free, but they claim they will always be free for up to 75 units. At SXSW I saw one of their people and they said they will have the ability to get bids on jobs like cleaning, painting and such soon - I assume this is how they make money. “ Ben Travis

Pros: they are new and offer free operations for landlords and tenants
Cons: new company, not mentioned on BP much
Cost: “We get paid by service providers - like insurance companies, plumbing companies, screening companies, A/C and heating, moving companies..... oh you get the idea. TenantCloud is free, but if you decided to use any of the service providers products then you can buy in TenantCloud, which only makes life even more convenient.”