All Forum Posts by: Chris Grenzig

@Lilach Holtzer nice to meet you! I lived in Jax for 3 years but moved to Orlando 8 months ago. We've bought 150+ units in Jax and we still own and manage 51 units there currently. We are also a licensed property management company focused on long-term rentals from single-family, townhomes, condos, all the way up to 80-unit properties and everything inbetween. We have a deep background in heavier value-add projects and we like to take a long term view on our investments. I'll shoot you a PM too, would love to jump on a quick intro call and connect!

@Bryan Field I moved to FL from NY to self manage our 16 unit property, we've bought 150+ units and we still own and manage 51 units in Jacksonville. We also started managing for other owners in Jacksonville and Orlando, so I can speak from both ends. 

You could probably manage it yourself, other people do it and have chimed in on how to do it. In my opinion the biggest thing you're paying for with a property manager is the experience, staying up to date on legal complaince, and having stuff in place already.

If you decide to start self managing you're going to have to spend time up front to figure some stuff out (exactly how much I don't know) and periodically spend some time doing various stuff.

The truth is, if you have a property where you have a great tenant, they pay on time, they never cause problems and stuff rarely breaks, management is very easy. The most difficult part is doing the accounting. However, the stuff that takes up our time is the bigger problems. Evictions, resident's passing away, posting notices, doing preventative maintenance walk throughs, resident complaints, neighbor complaints, skips, move outs, turnovers, emergency maintenance, etc.

I used to be strictly on the ownership side, from 2016-2020 I hired property managers. But now managing my own stuff and now managing for other people, property management companies aren't these huge profit centers unless the company has crazy efficiencies or they nickel and dime for you for every last thing. You can still make good money otherwise I wouldn't be doing it, but property management is still fairly labor-intensive over a decent-sized portfolio. 

The main question is $950 a month worth all the upfront time, and the potential increased time when things go wrong. To a certain degree, but not entirely, hiring a PM company is insurance against your time. 

@Seth Mattox so we manage some that are over an hour away, so we have to do some of this stuff, but not to the same degree. Some keys for managing remote that I can think of are:

-Leasing, are you going to pay local agents to do it or use self showing software like showmojo or tenant turner. What are you legally allowed to do?

-Maintenance, find a local NARPM chapter and they probably have a bunch of affiliate vendors on there. They've all paid to be on that list, so they might not be THE cheapest option, but they want to work with PMs and probably do already which should simplify things. Also other PM companies will be members of that NARPM chapter, you could try networking with them to see if they have any vendors they can share with you. 

-Softwares, definitely use a property management software like Buildium (thats what we use) but there are others like Rentvine, rent manager, appfolio, etc. We also use showmojo for leasing which allows for self guided tours. Lockboxes cost $75-100 per lockbox to use the software. 

- Accounting, not mentioned, but make sure you can confidently run the trust accounting and security deposit which is compliant with state code. 

- VAs, I don't think this is necessary for 30 doors, but depends on how much availability you have and how time consuming these properties will be. You shouldn't hire a VA until you have all your systems and processes in place and you have specific repsonsibilties and roles for the VA to have. Hiring a VA is like hiring anyone else, and sometimes more difficult since they're remote and you can't sit down and show them the ropes every day for a month until they learn it all

- relocation, you might not have to relocate, I know there was one property manager on peter lohmanns podcast who only does remote PM, but they have some employees in the area in which they manage, so that might be worth finding and listening to. Eventually I do think it would make sense to hire someone in the area though to help do somethings as boots on the ground. Usually a PM can handle 50-100 units depending upon the makeup of the portfolio. 

@Ivana Ivanovic we've bought 150+ units in Jacksonville and we still own and manage 51 units there. I also manage about 50 new construction homes for other owners in various places, and even though there is less R&M than older stuff, stuff still breaks and you need to fix it. 

Most markets the physical vacancy is 5-10%, good chance you can find it by googling and seeing what the average is. For R&M it'll depend on the type of property, but I think 5-7% is probably a decent number. However, also don't forget to budget for turnover costs and capex reserves too, which many people ignore. 

@Nelisa Lee and @Andres Rodriguez we've bought 150+ units of MF in Jax and we still own and manage 51 units in Jax, and we also manage for other owners as well, fully licensed and insured. If you ever have any MF properties 2-80 units we'd love to take a look to acquire, and if you guys are ever in need of property management services we'd love to take a look and see if we would be a good fit for you and your properties. We manage also manage single family, condos, townhomes, etc on top of the MF properties. 

@Avishay Stav finding flips anywhere on the MLS is going to be very difficult. Even finding deals through wholesalers can be tough and competitive as well. There are a lot of people who actively flip and the best wholesalers who actually have good deals (not all wholesalers are created equal) have a lot of buyers looking at their deals too. Like someone else said, your best margins are direct to owners, but that usually takes time and money to do so. It's probably easier, quicker, and smarter to do a few smaller margin deals through wholesalers, have some capital and then also start doing direct reach out yourself. That way you're building a track record and making some money until you can start to build up your own pipeline of deals to take down.

@Gerardo Waisbaum and @Norma Ramirez if either of you are ever thinking about holding a property as a rental let me know and we'd be happy to help. We've bought 150+ units and still own and manage 51+ units in Jacksonville but we also manage for other owners as well. Fully licensed and insured. A lot of our clients are investors since we're investors too and we really understand what it means to be an owner/investor. 

Also, if you ever have any MF properties 2-80 units let me know, we're always looking for deals to buy ourselves

 @Brent Warner I'm from Long Island myself and moved to Jax FL in 2020 and moved to Orlando about 9 months ago to be closer to my wife's family and some of my family thats also moved down. We've bought 150+ units that we've renovated and managed, and we also manage for others.

Cash flow for anything you're looking for is not going to be that amazing most likely. For $250k purchase you're looking at condo's in okay areas, or small houses in some not so great areas. If you can househack something like a 2-4 unit your down payment money might go further and allow you to borrow more since often times lenders will factor in some or all of the other rent as income in the DTI calculations. So if you bought you're own home at 5% down you might be only able to qualify for a $300k loan but if you bought a duplex and factored in the other rent, maybe it's now $400k. However, I'm totally making up numbers and I would talk with a lender to verify this information and get more specifics.

Just be aware, even if you house hack there's a good chance the other rent is not covering all your expenses or even your mortgage payments, but it should make your living costs cheaper than a single-family home you just buy to live in. This might also be true even after you move out and put a renter in your unit, so make sure to analyze the property as owner-occupied and also after you move out. 

Make sure to factor in 5-10% vacancy, taxes, insurance, mortgage, repairs & maintenance, lawn care, pest control, management fees, utility costs (goes in your name when vacant), turnover costs, and capex reserves. 

Or you could buy a single-family home with the VA loan and turn it into the rental, but you should still do the same analysis on the rent and expenses after you move out. If you can be close to the 1% rule you're probably safe, but still run your numbers to be safe.

I might have given you more questions than answers, but turning an owner-occupied property into a rental is a great way to get started!

@Floyd Blackwill sorry to hear you've had a bad experience, I'm from Long Island myself and lived in Brooklyn for 3 years. I moved down in 2020 to manage our own rentals and we've bought 150+ units and still own and manage 51 units in Jacksonville. We've also expanded into getting properly licensed to manage for other owners now too. Happy to connect and talk about management from the ownership side and owning a PM company side if you think there's any value or interest in that. 

@Sean O'Keefe thanks I really appreciate your kind words and I was really impressed by the software/platform you guys are building. Adrian and I have connected in the past which is why I didn't respond directly to him even though it's his post lol

@John Lubin we own and manage our own MF properties in Jacksonville. We've bought 150+ units and we currently own and manage 51. We also do 3rd party management for other owners too. We've been managing our own properties for 4 years and for other owners for the past year.

We use an attorney because this is a legal process and I want to make sure the right person is doing everything correctly so that we get possession back. We usually post no later than the 12th which we can then send to court on the 5th day (The day of posting doesn't count as the 1st day and you have to give them 3 full days, so that's why the 5th day). 

If you want to tell me what you were quoted for repairs I can give you my opinion on the cost, we're processing dozens of work orders every month. 

The cost of stuff today is absurd, especially since we only use licensed and insured vendors who don't require deposits upfront for work. 

Why no deposits? It means I know they're not running off with our money and the work doesn't get completed. (Sometimes larger jobs do require deposits, but we are working with companies we have used many times in the past or have some sort of draw schedule as work is completed). 

Happy to talk about any aspects of PM from both the ownership side and as a PM operator side if you think it would be helpful, but I would want my PM to use an attorney and I would be happy to pay it.