All Forum Posts by: Rob Boese

@Antonio Coleman 

Thanks Antonio! Sometimes you just have to show up. I looking forward to talking to people about all the things I learned about real estate over the years and learning from everyone's experiences too

@shoshana Shulman

I really enjoyed Baltimore. I had a house in the "Oakenshaw" neighborhood but really it was at the the intersection of Calvert and St. Paul. Everyone in Maryland will know that corner. It is the nexus of 4 neighborhoods, really.  

It is a great real estate town. Much like Fresno. If I were you, and looking at Fresno, I would target one of the many college areas. There will always be a decent pool of renters in Baltimore for college. Let me know what you are interested in and maybe I can share more of my experience there. If you are not located there, make sure you build in room for a good property manager. Baltimore, for all its Charm, does have it's problems.

I've  found Buildium markets aggressively as well. There are number of CRM programs we are beta testing as a company. We use them for sales, leasing and managing projects. I am not a fan of Salesforce which was too cumbersome and not as dynamic as we needed. Currently, we are working with a company in Vancouver called Allur for a program called SPARK to manage our sales metrics, leads and vacancies. We are still in the configuring stage but if can get to do what we want, it will be a game changer for us. 

A CRM may be what you are looking for as just a landlord as typically a CRM can handle large data sets and project management. Beware the price, pushy sales (not Allur), and tricky contracts. 

Think CRM as your front-line sales and projects and PM software as your back room management and accounting dept

There is no current product that we've found that can do both effectively. Sort of like a sleeper sofa. It's either a crummy bed or a crummy couch.

@Omni C 

Thanks for the welcome! I see you are located in Santa Cruz, which is one of many beautiful pocket markets here in CA, where you have astronomical real estate prices along the ocean and lots of opportunities in the "sea shanty villages" more inland. Terrific market for clever people like yourself. CA + Ocean = Demand

@Rachael Collins

Thank you! I really like the Fresno market and I've had great success partnering with some great people "down south" on managing buy and holds. I started my company with the intention of managing property but as things progressed, my team turned out to magnificent at leasing. Maybe that got that from me as investor, vacancies make my skin crawl! Except... when I am buying of course since I know my team can rent/lease it out quickly in most scenarios as long as we can bring up to standard quickly. With a low entry price point, Fresno is a terrific entry market for buy and hold new investors. Let me know if I can help in aspect of your future investments. There is almost nothing we can't do. If we can't do it, we certainly can point you to who can.

Thanks Ned! I hope I can bring a different perspective to the discussions and hopefully answer questions about property management and investing.

Hi Robert! I lived in Baltimore for a few years. You're in a great real estate town and I wish you the best of luck in Charm City! Alas, no crab cakes to speak of here in central California...

Hi Lisa! You published your post about Appfolio just as I was asking questions about it! This is why BP rocks

Thanks you for the info. I'm glad you are enjoying using Appfolio as much as I like Rent Manager.

Hi Bill - I've used a number of different property management software systems in my career as a professional property manager. 

Yardi - Way too cumbersome and expensive for your needs. Requires hours and hours of training just to get it be functional for you. It is primarily property management only and can't handle your other needs to run credit etc. The accounting module will make your eyes bleed since it is way to complex.

Buildium - Folks seem to enjoy Buildium since they are going from spreadsheets to their first management software. This can blow you away, if only because working with spreadsheets is a nightmare way to spend your time as a real estate person. It is very limited on the accounting side but for your first experience, it may be just right. For those of you with lots of properties, you may hit a limit with Buildium and start to look elsewhere for something more robust. Migrating your data to a newer platform is a terrible and disruptive transition. Buildium is not that customizable if you need something outside the box. Which, for me, defines 99% of real estate.

Rent Manager - My VP suggested we use Rent Manager for our office because it is very customizable. We have not looked back since. Basically, if you can get over the sheer amount of customization and features it offers you will likely not need another piece of software until you or rent manager goes out of business.It can handle auto payments, credit checks as add-on modules you can add for a small fee. I've heard of cases where people have left Rent Manager for Appfolio but I can't speak to that experience. Hopefully someone can chip in with their Appfolio experience.

I'm not going to quote pricing on these because they all offer different schemes for payment and it depends on how you get it delivered and the number of licenses needed.

Thank you Yutaka! I grew up on Long Island where a 3/2 would run you a half million. Here in Fresno, you can find a 3/2 on a quarter acre for $150,000 in a lot of areas of town that could be great for buy and hold, flips or any deal really. Needless to say, I love being located here and being part of an active real estate community.

I lived in Baltimore for a number of years and if you couldn't see the potential there, you couldn't see anything at all...

In a future post, I'l talk about my time living in New York and leasing luxury apartments, sometimes for 20K a month or more