All Forum Posts by: Chris Gantz

@Willie Page

It's around $500 for legal zoom to set up the Llc. I added a registered DBA "Doing Business As," trade name and Tax ID registration too, so it ended up being a little more.

@Mitch Jorgensen

If you're registering an LLC it depends if you're a sole member or setting it up to have multiple members.

If sole member it’s much easier and can be done online, I’ve personally used Legal Zoom. They’ll get everything you need such as Articles of organization, operating agreement, Tax ID/EIN. 

As far as transferring property into the name of the LLC you may want to consult an attorney as I'm not sure how this process works.

If you're purchasing in the future as a sole investor it's much easier to just have one LLC with one tax ID number for all your properties, your CPA will thank you.

If you get into partnerships, syndications, or funds you’ll have to have an Llc for each property that has a variation in ownership shares. 

@Kevin Wang

The Elecrician Inc is a great company that services the greater Madison area (Sun Prairie). They do a lot of Dream Kitchen remodel projects and also are doing a lot of the new apartment complexes like the Peloton on Fish Hatchery. I always call them first if it’s anything residential or multi family related. 

@Harold Phillips

What's your criteria for the complex? Number of units, age, class, price, targeted IRR, etc?

Do you purchase them independently or would you be interested in syndicated deals?

Our company is located in Wisconsin and we work with investors all over the state to invest in and manage large multi-family communities.

@Nathan Lebherz

I'm not as familiar with Milwaukee, but have strong ties to the Madison markets. 

It depends on what you're looking for as far as investment opportunities. As @Darius Ogloza and @Jonathan Twombly mentioned, these are strong niches that earn high gross revenues and are recession proof, however this also means highly desirable and often expensive. 

In Madison there are a few large investors that seem to have large shares of the housing market. Steve Brown Apartments and Forward Management are two of the largest players and often buy and hold everything from large apartment complexes to single family homes as they strategically buy entire blocks to tear down and develop large complexes. Because of this it's difficult to find "student housing," for anything less that $500,000, and it's usually based on the land value and has very little to do with the NOI of the rental.

Of course, as Jonathan also mentioned, Madison isn't just a college town, so the demand for apartments is extremely high among young professionals and government workers as well. 

If you're working with a large syndicate or institution the new builds are always selling from developers to large operators which could be a lucrative avenue to explore. 

If you're trying to invest in buy and hold student rentals I would look into the surrounding markets like Sun Prairie, Fitchburg and Middleton as these have some student housing, for commuters and graduate aged students, and are somewhat more reasonably priced. 

If you have any specific questions on type or areas of the market I'd be happy to answer as best as I can.

@Landrin Lewien

If you have the cash and the know how I would definitely recommend putting the upgrades up front to increase the value of your home so you can pay it off faster or refinance it to buy another property.

When we do renovation on apartment units we typically target a 10-15 month pay off period. Meaning if we spend 100 dollars we'll raise the rent per month 10$ to recoup that cost in 10 months. Obviously on larger items like flooring it can be a little longer than 10 months closer to 15, but we still aim for 10. 

Using this logic if you want to put 5-7k into the property you should be able to raise the rent at least $300/month to make it worth your time. 

Where in Wisconsin are you investing? 

@Kody Crouch

Where in Wisconsin are you investing? If you're looking for local management services we have offices across the state and would welcome the discussion. 

If you need a great Wisconsin lawyer, I use Axley Brynelson, LLP for everything including LLC set up, tax disputes, and legal council on eviction hearings. They would probably be able to advise you on how to best set yourself up for legal protection as a foreign investor.

@Scott Savard

Flooring - 8mm vinyl glue down tile plank - $1.5-$2 per square foot per material, and $1.5-2 for labor to install. We use this in everything we do, whether it be a luxury single family home, a new 54 unit multifamily development, or updates to existing units. 

Typically, we do 100% of the units on ground level in LVP, and if its an apartment we'll do carpet in the living room area and bedroom area on all floors not on the ground level. When we do the units with carpet we make sure to do the hallways, baths, and kitchens all in LVP and all connected. We try to make sure the carpet from one room does not share carpet with another room, so if one of the rooms ever needs to be updated with new carpet it doesn't have to be a 100% match since they won't share a seam. For the single family homes we just run it throughout upstairs and down, and let the tenants buy rugs if they prefer to have some carpet. 

The cost difference between the LVP and thin sheet vinyl is marginal and you'll pay 10 times more for the sheet over time if you have to keep replacing it. 

For the other items on your list we use local contracts, Sherwin Williams, Home Depot, and Amazon a lot. 

One item you didn't mention was light fixtures and plumbing fixture upgrades. This is often times the first level of upgrade we tackle on older properties, especially if they don't need a lot of TLC, and we find probably 90% of all of the products on Amazon. If you're doing this a lot Amazon has a 5% cash back American Express card that is highly beneficial. 

@Megan Palmieri

I manage in Wisconsin, so I’m not sure if you have rent controls in Atlanta. If you’re uncomfortable sending a 30 day notice you could update his month to month contract and raise his rent to a level where it’s no longer “so cheap.” You still have to give notice that the rent is increasing of course.

We do this often in value add class C renovation acquisitions. Once we’ve started to update common areas we raise rents on the month to month contracts to justify the repairs and bring in a higher class of clientele. 

@Asif Mohammad I own a property management company based in Wisconsin and we do a couple of STR vacation rentals in the Wisconsin Dells market, which is largely tourist traffic year round. We also do STR in Tomah, WI which is a couple of vacation stays or one-two night stays for people stopping off the highway, but is mostly month-3 month long stays for traveling nurses, laborers, etc. working temp jobs.

We set our properties up through AirBNB and just manage all marketing, booking, and account through AirBNBs site. We've found these seem to be much higher quality tenants than posting to Craigslist or whatever alternative sites people are using for STR, and it's only 3% versus Booking.com and others at 15%+. AirBNB tenants are very conscientious of their tenant score and consequently usually have the place already cleaned up at least 90% when they leave.

For our Tomah month-3 month stays all of our units are efficiencies and one bedrooms that previously rented at 400-550 monthly, and we've found the monthly average per unit is now usually between 800-950 depending on the month. 

For my largest clients I've been doing 5% of gross revenue for our fee and everything is 100% billable to them. We have a staff of cleaners and maintenance techs @ around $20 per hour. I know in the Wisconsin Dells area I've heard rates as high as 10-15%, but the client I'm doing the 5% for has hundreds of units with our company so we manage STR at a discount for them.

@Wendy Schultz where are your properties located in Wisconsin?