All Forum Posts by: Billy Linn

Hi Bill! Another dev right here =) It’s good that you have some hands-on experience working on houses, that will come in handy!

Very interesting reading all the responses. I'd pick something practical that is within your budget. Thinking back with my experiences with real estate professionals, I remember most of them had SUVs; some had trucks. It didn't matter to me what they drove. I cared about their attitude, their knowledge, and if they did what they said they were going to do. I'd probably get an a few years old SUV, something with space for people, signs, or whatever that also has all wheel drive.

@David Flanders did you find a good solution to your problem?

Good for you Troy, that’s awesome! I had no clue about investing until I was a lot older. Best of luck to you!

Some people are totally happy with using property managers and it saves them stress and headaches. We tried using a property manager on our first rental but it wasn't the best experience. It was a small, older house and they told us demand for it wouldn't be very high. They took months to find a tenant and they rented it for much less than we were expecting. Their communication was poor and they expensed things without checking with us first. We didn't know what we were doing, but the lack of control and communication convinced us to try it own our own when the contract was over. 

When it was our turn, we had the house rented out within a week for 25% more. We were very motivated to rent it out, where the property management company had a pool of rentals and our house wasn't very important to them. We were able to communicate directly with the tenant and was able to address small issues much more frugally than having to hire someone for everything.  We have some tenants now that go most of their lease needing little or no management, and in those cases paying a property manager feels like a waste of money.

My wife and I have had a lot of moments where we were at a total loss what to do (and sometimes still do), but the next thing we know we found a solution, the problem is in the past and there are rainbows again (for a little while anyway). It sure does keep things interesting, I'm excited for you!

Try GovernRent (my software), it has fuel logs for your vehicles, mileage logs that you can track miles for your business, properties, or even down the the unit. It doesn't OCR receipts, but it takes 20 seconds after you fill up and you know you have the data correct and it is related to the business data you care about. You can upload a photo of the receipt to keep a record, or a photo of the pump if the receipt doesn't print (which seems to be about half of the ones I go to).

You can do the same thing for expenses, but I need to build out a lot of reporting on that (it's coming). Most of the app is free, but if you want to store a lot of documents and photos there are subscription plans for that. 

If you drive a lot, use multiple vehicles or have multiple LLCs set up, logging the data this way will make mileage deductions a piece of cake come tax time next year. 

Doesn't smartmove remove your access to the applicant's details after a few months? 

@Lynn McGeein, What do you use for your rental application and employment verification forms, something you crafted or a service? Are they paper or online (or both)? 

Like Nathan said, there are a lot of products out there to solve the problem of screening tenants so it would be worth checking those out. I’ve built a mobile friendly web app designed to organize information for landlords and I was planning on adding applications to it next so this is good timing. You’ll be able to specify the fields you want, it will email you when one is submitted, and it will keep a record of the application on your property (or unit for multi family) screen. I’ll have something for you to demo later this week.

Hi Spenser, I could build this for you. What fields / data do you want to collect?

Hi Kanav,

I'm interested in finding out more about your software needs. If you don't find anything and are willing to help develop something that fits your needs, I'm building a landlord app that's focused on helping individuals track and organize things related to managing their real estate investments. Let me know if you're interested in trying it out. 

You can track expenses and upload receipts, organize your progress pics, documents, vendors, leases, vehicle mileage logs, and some other things. I don't flip houses so it would be neat to see how well the software would hand what you need it for.