All Forum Posts by: BOB CRANEY

Go to a local Sherwin Williams and talk to the manager and tell them you want to speak with an outside salesperson. Call that person and tell them your a landlord with X # of properties and you want to open and account and get some pricing locked in for your repaint materials. Superpaint is pretty nice for interiors but you could drop to Pro 200 or Pro 400 to keep your costs down. Ask the outside sale rep for 3 referrals for small to medium sized painting contractors who do builder and contractor work. You dont want a company that is retail homeowner oriented. They will do a great job but will be 2x the cost of a sub who is more contractor oriented. You supply all the paint, and they supply all the misc supplies and labor. I offer to reimburse my guy for misc supplies if he can give me the receipts. 

try Kraus faucets on Amazon. All brass construction with high quality ceramic cartridges internal.

I just installed this faucet and its a quality piece WITH GOOD REVIEWS.

KRAUS KPH-1630CH.I have installed a few other Kraus faucets and all have been commercial quality and look to be built to be used regularly

If you have a small kitchen and you pitch in the demo labor you should be able to get a decent job for $6-7,000. If you are going to hire a contractor to procure all the materials and do all the work then he will be adding a 25-35% profit margin for his efforts. When you can buy all the materials at contractor pricing and hire out the labor, you save on the markup. 

You should be able to price the job out with you being involved and also fully subbed out prior to pulling the trigger.

If you attend a REIA then ask around for some good recommendations on where to buy materials at a discount and reliable contractor recommendations. The best, most reliable and value priced contracts will be very busy and you may have to wait for them to get a hole in their schedule.

@Tyler Speelman

I 2nd what Nathan G said. It’s already written in my lease from day 1. I try to make sure they understand if they want to break a lease that it’s 2 full months “buyout” and that starts from the beginning of a month, not some partial months. Security deposit is held until the property is re-rented in case I have to cover some water bills or electric bill when they have it removed from their name after moving out. When you have that kind of time and $$ cushion, you shouldn’t loose any rent.

I have had several in this situation and most called and asked if I would do 30-45 day notice and less of a penalty, but I stuck with the language in the lease. Many were month to month anyway, so they didn’t need to pay any penalty, just give written notice

85% of the time you have a leak from a toilet. It can be a flush valve that doesnt shut off or over flows because its not adjusted properly or a flush valve/flapper seal leaking. Pull the lid off the tank and sit and flush the toilet 10 times. Watch and listen to see if anything can be heard or seen to be obviously leaking. Replace all the bad parts with the highest quality replacement parts you can get. I have been having a rash of leaking Kohler toilets with the newer style 3" flush tower valve. The factory gasket is breaking down prematurely and can be damaged by in tank cleaning products a lot of tenants use. 

Do the same test with all the sink and kitchen faucets. A faucet that leaks 1/2 gallon per hour, can waste 360 gallons in a month. If you have multiple leaks, you get the idea. I have stopped buying the junky faucets sold by the big box stores due to the cheap guts inside them. There are many good quality options from plumbing supply houses or on Amazon. The main difference is the internal parts that are more often brass or ceramic valves that are meant to run for thousands of cycles and have warranty to replace any faulty cartridge parts. 

If you have any exterior hose bibs, i would make sure you have them shut off inside the house. Anytime you visit test them from the outside to make sure they are still turned off.

If you suspect some extra tenants are occupying the apartments, go over there in the morning or evening around the time people get off of work. You should know what vehicles your legit tenants are driving and if there are extra vehicles there, it could be a clue to extra occupants

There was no #1 biggest mistake but in hindsight over a long period, a lot of little ones that add up to lost opportunity. This one though touches everything

1. Underestimate the importance of Time... The time it takes to learn about real estate, find a property, fix up a property, sell/rent a property, manage a property etc we only have so much time in our lives to achieve what we want and its the most important resource we need to get a handle on early, to get us where we want to go in life

@Curtis Mears

I have had contractors do work for me on a particular task but I don’t leave it open ended. It’s an hourly rate per man with an amount of hours not to be exceeded to complete the work. If you leave it open ended you are handing them a blank check book, with no motivation to be efficient and productive with the least amount of man hours to get the work done.

If the contractor cannot give you a fixed price on the type of work they regularly do with some unit charges for “extra” like replacement of rotten roof decking then he isn’t experienced.

When you aren’t on the job supervising hourly guys, they do everything but actual work.

If he didn’t finish the job I would not pay him and let him know if he wants to get paid anything, your renegotiating the arrangement because you thought is it was open ended. Hahaha

@Jesse Smith

Full time or part time, you “friends don’t trust you or think of you as competent enough to manage their transaction. If you only earn your income from Real estate agency then you need to work on your sales skills. Your not selling yourself on a level that has them seeing you as a professional. If they make the choice to hire another agent you should make the choice to not provide them with any real estate advice, it’s not ethical.

You need to realize that tree discomfort some people feel using a friend is something you will have to push through if you want to get their business and actually make a living at being an agent. Stop talking up how much investment property you are buying and start talking about how many transactions your doing and the great deals you are getting for your buyers. As investors, the process is not as intimidating as it is for buyers who only do it every 7-12 years. Research some of the top sale gurus on converting friends to clients. There are proven techniques to follow.

@Dana Boyes

The open house concept is slowly going by the wayside. Where ever you choose to advertise your property you should have a ton of pictures of the interior/exterior and some neighborhood shots also. You can also take a 5 min video walkthrough of your property, narrating as you go to point our the highlights.

We do not so open houses. We prescreen all prospects who call and only set appointments with those who qualify. Don’t have 5 minutes to answer some basic questions about yourself, then I don’t want you as my tenant. More than 85-90% of callers do not qualify for one reason or another and your # open house applications will likely support this. We also found that open house applicants would not want to pay the $35 app fee if they knew 5 other people were applying for the same place.

Once you found your qualified needle in a haystack. set the appt with a day/time and call 1hr ahead to confirm, then text them when you are on the way over to meet them. Set the appt as soon as you can and remind them you have other prospects coming and it’s first come first served as it creates urgency.

Depending on how much action we are getting on a property we may incentivize them a bit

1. Offer to waive the $35 app fee

2. Or credit them the app fee if they are accepted and sign a lease within 14 days.

You are competing against a lot of other apartment and living options. Many of the big complexes give away a 1/2 to a full month of free rent, with certain restrictions of course. A no fee application may not be enough incentive so consider offering something more substantial as an incentive. I heard of companies giving a free 55” TV with a 1 year lease, since the TV is only $300-400 When you have a 30-100 unit complex you need larger prospect volume and quality is secondary.

Basically with my method, your qualifying funnel only has you meeting prospects you would rent to if everything they told you over the phone is true. You still need to verify it al of course.

@Michael Ealy

How many investors did you have on this deal and what kind of terms did you give? How much skin did you personally put in. It seems with the low initial purchase that you could have kept a much larger % of ownership for yourself. Did you ever consider a debt structure rather than a equity structure so you could control the deal better and benefit more from the huge upside you have..