All Forum Posts by: Clarence Smith

Hi Robert,

I am also a Philadelphia investor and ran into the same issue a few years back.I changed the title of my properties from my personal name to my LLC and had to pay the transfer tax.I had consulted with lawyers and title companies and unfortunately, there was no way around the transfer tax.

Hi Everyone,

I am new to the landlord business....and I've been doing a lot of research in the past few days to get ready. I've compiled a list of steps that I need to do before I find tenants, and I wanted to see if anyone could see anything missing from this list.

1. File for a Fictitious Name with the Pennsylvnania Dept. of State Corporation Bureau, and wait for your number.

Hi Clearance,

As long as the property is zoned currently in this case RM-1 which is multifamily vs. RTA-1 (for two family dwelling) per the new zone destination you should be fine.  A property can be legally zoned as a triplex but used as a duplex.  It is when the property is used the other way, legally zoned as a duplex and you use it has a triplex is when you would get in trouble.

 Have you accounted for all of these costs in you analysis? This is a huge red flag for most unless you have a good strategy for handling it. 

My input..

1. Is it a financed deal by a bank? They may have an issue with that.

2. My strategy would be to only buy if there were 3 split meters of gas and electric. Since i'm an out of state investor I want to stay far away from units that dont have split utilities since i'd rather collect rent rather than utilities. Some guys who are local to the units might not mind dealing with collecting and figuring out utilities, but there is sometimes a service that will read independent sub meters and bill your tenants accordingly.

3. Is this a deal of a lifetime? If not, then I would keep looking

I recently purchased a triplex that was classified as a duplex. Apparently a previous owner split one of the larger units into 2 and had the gas company also split the gas, but could not do so for the electric. When i purchased I called into the utilities/city to see how feasible it would be to install a 3rd meter, but i had issues with both of them. The city said it was designated as a duplex even though the wall framing in between were all done back when lathe and plaster was common which meant I could possibly get it grandfathered in. Next, the power company required a 400 amp upgrade (cant remember) to the electrical which required spending 15k+ just to do so.  I ended up converting this to a duplex to create larger units and hopefully fill it with longer term tenants.