All Forum Posts by: Calvin Thomas

@Calvin Thomas I would disagree with your assessment of Philadelphia. The city has excellent fundamentals...strong Ed's and Med's which are some of the most stable employers, huge investments made in the life science sector,  proximity and easy access to NYC and DC, international airport, port city to name a few. 

Like most cities, there are some neighborhoods that perform better than others but to say only the center city area is worthy of investment is inaccurate. Unfortunately, 99% of BiggerPockets posters who are not local to Philadelphia and choose to invest in Philadelphia invest in the lowest tier neighborhoods, just as they do in most other distant markets where they invest because they are lured in by the inexpensive cost of housing. 

I also hear complaints about the city not being a "landlord friendly" city. Well, I can say from my personal experience owning only A/B located properties, if you maintain all appropriate licenses, take care of your properties, and are responsive to your tenants its smooth sailings. Its usually the tenants who live in the lowest tier housing that are most prone to play games and take advantage. 

Also, my worst performing project the past few years was a center city ground up project. My NW Philadelphia projects which are on the outskirts of Philadelphia (but still city proper) have been my best performers. Many others have enjoyed similar success there as well.

I have an applicant with an eviction from 2019. He has since restored his credit (740) and has stable employment. What measures can I put in place to reduce my risk as a landlord? What questions should I ask during the screening?

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

Don’t put in electric baseboard heaters. We manage hundreds of units. Several with baseboard heaters. Those leases are never renewed due to the high usage cost. $800 electric bill for 800 sqft place is not uncommon. Tenants simply can’t afford them and move out. Sometimes in the middle of January breaking their lease. Unless you have some super air tight triple pane windowed studio with 8” thick walls you need something else. Gas is usually cheap to run. If it’s a small place mini splits work well.

Don’t fall victim to the siren song of cheap baseboard heaters to be drown by crashing waves of KWH.

I own a duplex in Fayetteville Arkansas and the city is buying part of my backyard to add a trail which connects to a great local park. As part of the deal, they are paying me to take some of the backyard. It's a large yard that overlooks trees and such. I thought a great value add would be to add a fence to buy units (with a divider).

I'm trying to decide what the best kind of fence would be: pine vs powder coated chain link? They are about the same cost (which surprised me) but for a rental property that is really probably mostly for pets, I'm concerned about maintenance and upkeep. Has anyone had any success of failures with picking the wrong kind of fence for their property? Any insight would be great.

If it's well insulated, then the gas costs would also be cheaper. And just because electric is mandated on new buildings doesn't mean it is a cheaper utility. It's a ridiculous mandate by the legislators who thinks they'll save the environment on the back of tax payers.

my point stands. I think it will cost more to heat with electric, which will drive down his rent rates and hurt his bottom line.

Currently we do not pay anybody's heat or hot water.  In every building, that we bought that had common heat and hot water, we seperated those units on to their own devices.  The exception being condos where the common heat was not in our control.  We have installed gas hot air furnaces, gas hot water boilers, and heat pumps.  All of thoise are more expensive to install that electric baseboard but have much lower operation costs.  We're in it for the long haul, we want tenants to stay a long time and reduce vacancy.  We've had 30 year tenants, and currently have a 25 year tenant, and several 10 year tenants.  Our average tenancy is 12.5 years.

Hi all,

My wife and I have worked over the last 7 years to build a rental portfolio and are getting to the point where the bookkeeping/data entry tasks are becoming too time consuming. Would love to have a reliable person to help free up some of our time to focus on growing the business. We currently use a mix of apartments.com/Rentmanager to record transactions. Free ACH rent collection on apartments.com and Rentmanager for the accounting elements. I have heard mixed reviews on virtual bookkeepers and would be open to hiring a domestic bookkeeper as well. Any suggestions on where to look? I have searched fiver/upwork and posted in RM forums.

Thanks so much!

Great idea, I thought about mini splits for each unit but that would be about $17-$20k and wouldn't be worth it. I would need to make sure there would be enough power for each unit to run baseboards. Thank you for the suggestion.