All Forum Posts by: Carl Hebert

@Charlie Moore - we charged them the background/credit check fee ($30) We don’t have an application fee outside that.

@Charlie Moore - Lots of great advice and comments on this. I personally am a big fan of Facebook Marketplace. I have not tried listing on Zillow and before FB I would use Craigslist.

My last two listings also had a huge (30+) responses on the first day and ended up with over a hundred by the end. 

I have a copy paste response that is basically;

"Yes it is still available, please read entire ad and if still interested text or call, Name, at (207)Number. He handles the showings for that unit. Thanks for your interest in our property!"

The ad will state that there is a non-refundable $30 fee for the background/credit/eviction check.

It will also state the rules - no smoking, about pets, etc 

and of course it has all the details on the unit.

When my property manager receives the call or text (usually text) he responds with "Hi, did you get a chance to read the entire ad?" reinforcing the our first response, if they respond yes he asks a few more questions and proceeds to setup a showing. 

We ended up with around 30 applications paying for the fee out of the 100ish responses for each unit, not a bad result in my opinion. (also appear to have two great tenants!)

We actually ended up putting the ad in pending mode as the responses were not slowing down.

Here are a couple takeaways from our experience and some info

1. We did price according to the market so no issue with rent price

2. The units are remodeled and most units in this area are not

3. Early spring, perhaps income tax returns? 

4. In a nicer area of town.

5. We stopped listing on Craigslist because we were only getting around four responses on there now.

6. We shared the listing on our business page and personal pages, creating more shares as our friends and families also shared it on theirs. Which we greatly appreciated and thanked them :)

7. I like to think our growing reputation as decent property managers is helping.

8. Making sure we try our best to have possible applicants read the entire ad I believe saves us a lot of time and effort.

9. I also firmly believe that it weeds out a lot of bad tenants, they now they are going to come up on the checks and don't want to waste their time or money.

I am 100% sure that Facebook Marketplace is different in every market, but in ours it seems to be the way to go and until it starts look otherwise we will continue to use it for our future postings. 

@Adam Merrill Hi Adam, I sent you a connection request. 

@Matt Leonard - Have you tried talking to the tenants case worker? They have to follow certain rules to be able to receive section 8 and if they don't follow them can lose their eligibility. You can ask them to also move the tenant from your apartment because of the disruptions with other tenants and personnel. 

I think it would be worth a try and save you the expense of a lawyer.  

Grats! That’s an awesome milestone to hit!

@Eric Pierpont - Definitely! I’ll be back in Maine May 2 and most likely there till Octoberish. 

@Adam Shaw - Madison we straight up flipped, took the money I got and put it towards another multi. 

Broad st. I still own with no debt outside of the small loan (less then 6k) from the city of Auburn. Will look to get either a heloc or may go full mortgage on it. 

Really waiting to finish the current project up on Academy st, by July hopefully, and then get back to looking for more properties. 

@Ryan Murdock - I think it was in an earlier post about this same problem and your name stuck in my head lol, I am pretty sure you had a few comments in there :) 

You are spot on about making it being the 16th for the late fee.

I never thought about a tenant without a lease, lol. All mine have one, even the two that are section 8 with tenancy at will, but you are right if a tenant did not have a lease legally you couldn't charge a late fee in Maine. 

Learn something new everyday in this business!

Your welcome, I got the idea from @Ryan Murdock he posts a lot on here. 

@Adam Shaw - I did a flip 3 years ago with 3 other partners, we tracked our hours and agreed beforehand to pay ourselves $15 an hour for our work. We also tracked all expenses and everyone was reimbursed for all receipts (no receipt no pay).

Like you are planning we did all the demolition ourselves and most of the rest also.

The house was not a 100% gut, but pretty close and it needed exterior/landscape work on top of that. It had water/mold damage due to the bank not venting it for the summer. We removed 2 ft of sheetrock to remove the mold and had to tear up half the livingroom floor down to the joists due to the water damage. 

New kitchen, bath, decks, windows, doors, floors, ceilings, driveway (it literally had no driveway just lawn), tree removal, gutters, electrical and plumbing. 

We paid $40k for the house, a 3br 1.5 bath, with 1 car garage in basement. 

Out of pocket expenses not including the purchase price or our labor was $64.5K

We did get lucky on furnace and did not have to replace that. add 5k+ if that needs to be replaced.

Listed it for 150k and it sold for 145k

Only regrets was letting two of the partners talk me into doing tile floors for the kitchen and bath. Also being talked into doing a tile backsplash in the kitchen and tile wall for the tub area. Extra money and extra time. The surrounding area did not warrant doing the tile work. To top it off the kitchen floor wasn't done right and had to be redone while it was under contract!

Images on realtor

Did another house, 3br 1 bath, on my own to hold, bought for 30k, 65k (45k out of pocket, 20k grant/loan from city) in repairs, appraised for 150k. Currently still own and rent it out for 1000 a month. Again furnace was good, but needed lots of exterior work on landscape, retaining wall and driveway. 

When I look at houses now those prices are in my head if it is a full gut job. Figuring around 60-70 in repairs, doing lots of work ourselves.