All Forum Posts by: Brock Bolduc

@Jacob Beg

I’m a property manager and have run into this many times. Definitely a tough situation but you’ve got to treat this like a business. If she’s late then she needs to pay the late fee. I am certainly guilty of working with my residents on occasion but I do my best not to allow the delinquency to go past the 15th of the month as it’s usually hard for someone who’s paycheck to paycheck to get caught back up. My suggestion would be a formal letter detailing that late rents will no longer be tolerated and late fees will be assessed per the lease agreement. If they’re late, serve the proper pay or quit notice. Sometimes just seeing the pay or quit will snap residents back into paying on time. If not then I’ve gone as far as filing for eviction and only allowing the resident to pay the rent along with the attorneys fees and costs we’ve incurred to file the eviction. If you’re not comfortable enforcing the lease it may help to hire a property manager and allow a new face to come in and lay down the law. I’ve taken over many properties in this situation and sometimes a change of face will get the residents back to paying on time. Hope this helps. Best of luck!

@Jacob Claxton I’m a property manager and I’ve listened to The Time Wealthy Investor by Mark Dolfini several times and always come away with some great nuggets about how to streamline and systemize the business. I’ve implemented a lot of things in my business like self-showing lock boxes, property management software (Buildium), and other software tools like Process.st to help make things run a little smoother and provide a better resident experience.

@Christopher Murphy I’m a property manager in the Daytona Beach area and I like to use rentcast.io. It gives rental comps in the area and is a good starting point for determining rental rates in your area based on asset class

@Holly Horn

We always try to make sure the utilities are the residents responsibility. Unfortunately if water is included it tends to be abused and leaks aren’t reported as quickly as if the resident were responsible for the bill. As others have said it can also create big fluctuations in cash flow. In my area a lot of the older multifamily buildings only have one water meter so we always look to separate it if possible as a way of increasing the net income of the building

@Rashee D.

We give our residents a 3 day grace period and post 3 day notices on the 4th each month with late fees. If they don’t pay by the 7th then we can start the eviction filing if we choose to. Typically if a resident gives us a heads up that they will be late and are good residents we will work with them to an extent but try to get the rent paid by the 15th. It’s been my experience that it’s tough for people to get caught back if they get more than 2 weeks behind. There’s also plenty of rental assistance funds available right now and we’ll point our residents in that direction to help keep them in the property. It’s usually better to try to work with the residents than go straight to eviction because the cost of vacancy and turnover are always the biggest expenses to a landlord.

@Mike Loughry I’m a broker and property manager in the area and I would say it’s definitely worth doing some upgrades to attract a better tenant base. We have a lot of people moving to the area and very little inventory so rents are way up. My clients have been updating units as they come vacant and are seeing a great return on their investment. Let me know if I can help you out.