All Forum Posts by: Chris London

@Chuck Mucciolo sounds like a nice home. Single-family homes should NOT have landlord monitored cameras anywhere on the property. You should manage outdoor maintenance with the same regular landscaping and pool cleaning that the property has been receiving before it was a rental. If you have landscapers come monthly in the past I would suggest continuing this and LL covers the cost. Same w/ the pool. Make sure the tenants have a clear and easy method for submitting work orders. Make sure the lease spells out clearly who is responsible for what. A common example in my area is the tenant is responsible for mowing the lawn and LL is responsible for all other landscaping (trimming hedges, cleaning gutters, power washing, etc)

A surveyor would mark property lines, you can expect to pay a couple to a few hundred dollars for the survey. The HOA or similar entity may have rules about fence placement.

@John Schulz

I don't know Chicago specifically however you might look into if the city can require you to stop using it as a rental mid-lease. Now imagine you don't have grounds to evict so you have to re-house at your expense. That would be pretty terrible for all.

@Gary B. 

1) Late fees are fees, in addition, to rent that the tenant pays. The PM keeps these additional fees for their additional effort in 'chasing' rent. The owner (you) would still get the full rent amount. They should not come out of the original rent amount as your post may imply (unless I read that incorrectly)?

2) Maintenance: Do you know what's worse than being nickel and dimed to death by tenant maintenance requests? Not having tenants report maintenance issues and have a $75 toilet fix to turn into a much costlier backflow issue/flood. If you haven't already you might consider inspections of each property looking to address all issues upfront. You can always incorporate your improvements to the property as a reason for future rent increases.

Yes, Project Source brand at Lowes for $10/ea roughly.

If tenants install they will take them with them and the holes will need to be patched each tenancy.

That is a tremendous amount of water that caused that ceiling damage. The MDF wood of the vanity would be badly damaged as well if that is how the water made its way out of the tub. If this is the case you should look into mold remediation of both the vanity and ceiling. If you have a plumbing issue I'm sure you will take care of it however if you have tenants that don't understand how a shower curtain works they would need to cover the damage that they caused.

@Deangelo Mack this is a common scam in the rental business. Posting a property for rent/sale, owner out of town and no keys. Let yourself in and mail me a check.

@Cole Fleishour

Inspection: Video walkthrough is perfectly fine in these times. Make sure you have a checklist and be prepared to take screenshots or record the video call so you can review it.

Dogs: I'd backdate the fee to the move-in date. Start researching threads now for ESA's (emotional support animals) so you know how to manage when they write their own doctor's note for the dogs.

Radon: Joe S. above hit the nail on the head.

@Marc Nicolàs Mariano Congrats and good luck on the exam.

One thing you'll realize after the exam is that the class does very little to train you on the actual process of buying and selling but trains you more on ethics, laws, terminology, and theory.

Having a full-time job, you might consider finding a friend or neighbor w. a sole proprietorship brokerage. Ask them to be your BIC. Think of it in the same way people talk about finding mentors. Offer to host open houses for them or solve whatever it is they need help with. You might find they are open to a more favorable commission split and may even take the time to help you through your transactions.

@Charles Large When renters search on websites they commonly use price filters to search (ex: $900-$1200/mo). When they see your property priced what maybe a couple hundred+ over comparables they have to read the property description to see that there are benefits included and do the math to see if it's a good deal. I find the only thing people like less than reading is doing math.