All Forum Posts by: Beverly Meola

@Nik S.  is there a central heating/cooling plant for the building?  Are there any exterior or common area water spigots?  Landscaping irrigation on the same meter?

@Jason Krawitz I use a lease form from the state Realtor board because Massachusetts has so many tenant favored housing laws. The forms are recommended by local eviction attorneys. I've taken over accounts where the owners used generic leases and it started to bite them for different reasons. I think it depends on your state laws, but the board of Realtors is a good place to start.

it sounds like you have a pretty good case to leave the leases NNN, IMO.

Welcome to BP @Tucker Russell !

*with the exception of HVAC and fire/life safety systems.  Not all of these buildings were structured this way.  In some cases our engineers made repairs in tenant space.

@Mike Giudici  it sounds like it depends on the market how prevalent triple net is compared to gross leases.  I've managed multi-tenant mid rise office buildings that were triple net in Ft. Lauderdale and Hollywood, FL and I'm pretty sure it was the same in Miami for high rises.  One of the midrises had in-house electricty sub-meters (EMON) so the tenants were individually billed electricity on top of common area and parking lot lights. Boston has multi-tenant high rise triple net office space with onsite managers.  

When I say triple net, it was full pass through of expenses controlled by the building management team.  Tenants were billed their pro rata share (CAM, TAX, INS) but the tenants were responsible for repairs in their spaces with the exception of HVAC.

I would say, if the tenants are already accustomed to NNN why change it? The downside of gross leases is that you lose profits when some expenses rise if you don't have any expense cap pass through clauses in your leases. Massachusetts is seeing a 37% rate hike in electricity from National Grid. Couple that with a property tax hike (which Worcester did this year) and you're totally squeezed.

If you DO go the gross lease route, make sure you are protected from this scenario in your leases.

Hi @Account Closed , This type of software is known as CMMS (computerized maintenance management systems) in the property management biz. They can get pretty fancy to help facility managers life cycle and asset plan building systems in addition to tracking preventive maintenance programs and "corrective maintenance" (repairs). 

Buildium.com has a maintenance request portal through the resident website.  Depending on the number of units you have, the monthly cost could be worth it because you can set up workflows so that other users receive the request - which could be vendors if you want.

Red Hand's Electronic Tenant Solutions is something I've used with commercial properties (office, industrial).  They don't list prices on their website, so I'm not certain if they could size the service for residential, but we paid $1,000/year for one high rise building.  Could be worth asking if they have residential solutions.

Before I set up with Buildium there was a maintenance request form on my website.  Along with location/contact information there was an image and document upload field, and emergency level drop down menu selection (high, normal, low).  In another forum, I saw that someone was able to rig the email from their request form to automatically populate a GoogleDoc spreadsheet.  If you're spreadsheet savvy that could be the most inexpensive route.

Let us know what you find?

@Alan Lambkin , check your management agreement for spending authorization limits.  If you authorized the PM to complete repairs under a certain dollar threshold then he's just doing what you hired him to do unless you specifically asked him to communicate all repairs.  

He might also complete major repairs without your approval that would be deemed an emergency.  My management contract states "An emergency is defined as any event or occurrence that relates to the health, welfare or safety of the Tenants or the general public or is necessary to preserve the Property from material damage."  Even in the case of an emergency, he should have communicated any emergency repairs to you before the monthly statement.  

As much as I would like to say you should dump your PM and hire me, I think it's good business to at least be sure he knows what issues you have with his services by clearly stating what you think he's done wrong to see how he intends to remedy the situation. If you've been pretty clear about the issues and are getting no apologies then that's a different story.

@Christopher Reynolds , I contacted a couple attorneys in Worcester about eviction costs and they both said the same thing..."it depends."   If you want them to just send notices, expect to pay $200-$300.  If you need them to actually show up in court, expect to pay their hourly fee + court costs + attorney's expenses (like copies).  Hopefully the notice to quit is enough to convince them to move on!

Hi @Wendy Vaidic , I'm helping one of my clients separately meter electricity in a 2-family conversion. The original structure was a single family with a garage and 2-level addition. The add on has a separate breaker panel but the garage is considered common area. So garage lights, garage door motors and smoke detector system for the whole building will be added to a house meter, and another meter is being installed for the add on. We're paying $2100 for the whole job.