All Forum Posts by: Brandon Kamm

Curt, elaborate, I can borrow $20,000 k for 15 months paying 4% fee and minimum payments each month. Obviously it could have an effect on credit score in short term, but are you saying you would explore more expensive financing for short term purposes?

I would counter that with some investors the reason they have the ability to borrow with these rates is that they DO have the assets to back it up and great credit.

It goes without saying you have to be able to get out of the loan before the period is up or you get drilled, but you would prefer more conventional or hard money lending than using these.

I see it as a means of borrowing at 4% often times less, and earning three to four times that amount.

Jhansi,

I say this with all respect. Do you realize that you will not receive any future rent from this tenant? You may receive the partial payment along with the "I'll pay it with my next check" line.

I am more than happy to eat crow if I am wrong, but this lady is playing you for the fool. I hope you have learned from this.

1. Know the law before you get in this business
2. Have a lawyer ready to enforce the lease when the resident breaches.
3. Lie to me once shame on you, lie to me twice shame on me. We hope people are good, most are, unfortunately many tenants are liars, this should be a good learning experience for you.

It looks as though you have spent lots of unnecessary money on this situation, don't let that happen again.

Thanks for all the feedback. Just to preface, i do have an accounting/finance background so i am well aware that you have to satisfy the debt prior to expiration or you get drilled. i was more curious as to thoughts on short term financing and if many were using it for those means. Great feedback

I have always chunked these in the trash but happened to open one yesterday. Credit card I haven't used in years extending 0% for 15 months and 2% for 21 months. I believe there was a 3 or 4 % fee to use. Curious as to if any of you are utilizing this as a quick means of capital for a project that you may look to flip or refi in a short period of time. Looked to be cheap short term capital with a big penalty if you can't get out in time, much better rates than hard money. If you had a few of these you could quickly have a huge chunk of capital to invest. Curious to thoughts of all on this topic.

Speaking as a PM company owner I would rather use an electrician for these issues strictly for liability reasons. However with that being said we waive expenses like this all the time if the owner had a concern , whether that's eating the cost or waiving a future month mgmt fee. IMO that's just good business and helping with the investment. At a minimum they could have charged you cost with no markup. I find it odd how may pm's lose a client over $50 such as this case and give up hundreds or thousands of future fees.

Speaking as a property manager, your landlord is on the hook big time. f i were you i would consult an attorney quickly and document everything that is missing along with a timeline of the events. Assuming your story is correct and you have a reputable management company you rent from it sounds like it would head to their insurance company. If your management company is uninsured it would head to court. Based on the facts presented they would be 100% negligible

Nathan,

I would have to disagree with this point. Any situation that arises after hours is one that could potentially be damaging to the property and/or expensive. Is it your thought that you would rather a resident not call you until 8am for a situation of fire, burglary, hot water tank burst, pipes burst. I have handled my share of 2am calls and most were ones that if a quick response were not given the damage would have grown significantly the more time elapsed. As the owner would be the one handling the expense are you comfortable placing the responsibility on the resident to see that the problem is resolved. There are plenty of calls you get at 2am that don't need to be addressed until the next day as they aren't emergencies, just curious as to whether your thought indicated that its not necessary to handle anything after hours and are placing it all in the residents hands.

This is a topic that comes up quite a bit and PM's do get bashed to an extent, but also to an extent rightfully so. BP has a number of professional real estate investors, those are ones who either don't need a retail PM or do it themselves. PM's can provide a benefit to those who aren't real estate experts and/or investors and are willing to pay for the service. If you are a RE pro it doesnt make sense to pay $50 to $75 a month for someone to collect rent and deposit it, handle vacancies, and service issues. For someone who may be a business professional, lawyer, doctor, etc. they may be looking to invest in RE but dont know the ins and outs of it and are willing to pay someone to do that for them. I have many clients who pay us that $75 to $100 per month to manage and because its a good property we may do nothing more than collect rent, send a check, make sure the resident is happy, and renew a lease. $1,000 a year sounds like alot for that amount of work, and frankly just for that work it is. However, for those people who may have families, limited amount of non-work time, love to travel etc. paying that fee to not have to deal with any of the problems is worth it to them. They wont have to miss a kids baseball game to show a house, leave dinner to talk to a tenant about a flood, and for the peace of mind they are willing to give up some of their profit to take that off their plate.

I will say this too if you look over BP and see PM bashing a lot of it comes from experiences of being hosed by a PM over repairs, bogus expenses, etc. Those are the ones that give PM's a bad name and unfortunately this is an industry that many operate in unregulated and unlicensed and do screw over owners making it harder for those on the up and up to keep a good name.

Bryan,

I used it a bit last year and made it my resolution to stay on top of it on 2012. So far check it every day and work with the budgeting. It is a great tool especially with showing the ram where money goes.

My only complaint would be that some accounts, 401k with ING and Vanguard 529 plan for kid ant download automatically. Other that that it's great and FREE.

Well worth for the minimal time needed to work with it

Oh god where do I start....
You may have seen me on The First 48 following a murder
In one unit of a building we have had 3 tenants die in 15 months
Various offers of sex for rent to maintenance staff
The Feds took over property we managed as owner turned Out to be a drug trafficker
More fires due o stove left on than I can count
Employee/ resident shot coming home late night from guy hiding in bushes
Tenant mad because apartment broken into and her cake she baked was stolen....not concerned about the rest of her stuff
Countless tenant stole the kitchen and left water running

I could go on for days from stuff over the last 10 years
I will challenge any pm to a trade off of great management stories.....property management nothing to it