All Forum Posts by: Christopher Freeman

@Ezekiel Racelis, the speedtest was done on a phone that we own, and we bought the extender on Amazon, so it sounds like we're covered :) Thanks for your help!

@Ezekiel Racelis, no cement or metal, just a stairwell and a closet. The extender is located 30-40 feet from the main access point, and I think it almost has a line of sight. If not, then max obstruction would be two wall corners and a refrigerator. In my own house, my one access point is under the basement stairs and out travels through the floors, kitchen countertops, and sometimes even the exterior walls.

@Ezekiel Racelis, the speedtest in her room was only a few mbit, so maybe it's a combination of things?

@Account Closed, 100 mbit, which I believe is the fastest option in our area unless you purchase an enterprise subscription. Actual service at the box is usually much less than that, and it is rather slow at the extremities of the house, even with the Wi-Fi extender, but my business partner was able to browse the internet on all 3 site visits and watched the tenant do the same.

Our city is still relatively rural. Most of the surrounding areas only get 7 mbit.

@Account Closed, thanks for the feedback. We have attempted to resolve their problem with additional extenders, and the internet works in the bedrooms in question as far as browsing the internet is concerned. I understand your analogy to the bathroom. Where it breaks down in my mind, however, is that a bathroom sink is designed to deliver water to said sink. Range seems like a natural limitation of Wi-Fi, and I don't see a concise limiting principle on how much coverage should be expected of me when I have a payment-only obligation. Should they be able to watch Netflix on the toilet, or in the back yard? It seems like a big leap between paying for the subscription and investing in enterprise-style infrastructure that supports multiple overlapping wireless access points.

We are trying to train this tenant to be more independent. If something legitimately breaks, we'll take care of it, but this is one of those "Help, a lightbulb burned out!" kind of tenants.

@Anthony McEvoy, we are using a single access point to cover both units of the duplex. The AP is located in the unit belonging to the needy tenant.

I agree regarding the future of the tenant. The previous owners filled the apartment significantly below market rate, and we're actually missing out on about $5-7k/year of income due to this. We won't be extending their lease at the end of this year unless they are willing to accept a 30% increase in their rent.

@Lee Ripma, thanks for your response. Do you happen to know the name of the article?

Hi all,

We have some college student tenants whom we inherited from the previous owner. Most of them are fine, but one of them is very needy. The legacy lease provides internet, which we have provided and which works in the common areas of her unit, and which also works in two remote bedrooms (albeit not at lightning speeds) via a Wi-Fi extender that we provided as a courtesy.

My business partner has tested the Wi-Fi in her bedroom three times, and has been able to connect and load webpages. He also watched the tenant connect and load webpages. My understanding is that she is not able to stream Netflix on her smart TV. She's complained to her father, who is a co-signer on her lease, and he has gone into helicopter parent mode harassing us to "fix" the problem. Based on the content of his messages, we have learned that the tenant is feeding him misleading information about her complaint (we believe that she is trying to avoid taking responsibility for the fact that her complaint does not pertain to her ability to do schoolwork as she has maintained, but rather to watch Netflix).

The lease states that landlord provides internet. It does not state that we provide Wi-Fi, or guarantee coverage in all areas of the apartment. We aren't trying to screw anyone on technicalities, but we've already provided a free extender, and offered to give the tenant a $50 credit towards purchasing her own extender if she feels that would help. I believe that we met the requirements of the lease when we made internet available within the unit, and exceeded it when we provided the extender and offered to help them buy additional equipment. 

I don't want to train the tenant to expect technical support on her devices from us, and I also don't want to spend the next three months test driving equipment and configuring tenant devices on the network. In my last email, I told the tenant's father the the technical support he is requesting is beyond our expertise, the scope of our business, and the requirements of the lease.

Based on this background, do you feel we are being reasonable? How would you have handled this situation, and is there anything we might do differently in the future to help manage tenant's expectations from the get go?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

I'm working on rehabbing a recent purchase to get it ready to rent, and in the course of installing a new curtain wall I discovered that the newly created bedroom would be without a heat source. Upon further inspection, I discovered that one of the existing bedrooms also lacks this.

The house currently has oil steam heat and a wood stove, which for insurance reasons we are replacing with a gas stove. There is gas on the street.

I'm working on crunching the numbers on the best go forward strategy. I can't imagine it makes sense to tie into an old steam heat system that will likely need replacement in the next 5 years.

Adding electric baseboard heaters might be the least expensive way to get a heat source into the rooms, but I'm worried that the high operating costs could be a turn off for renters and drive down what they'd be willing to pay.

Has anyone else gone the electric route, and what was your experience like in terms of impact to your rental business?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can shed some light here!

So it is my understanding that multi-family properties that feature more than 4 units are appraised based on their NOI and Cap rate. I understand the math behind that, so no need to dig there.

My two questions are:

1. How to you determine the cap rate when the market value is the number you are trying to calculate (ie an unknown)? Is it just based on the contract price at time of sale, thereby permanently locking in the rolling market value cap rate of the property, or is it based on the cap rate of similar properties in the same market?

2. Does this valuation principle apply to all apartment buildings with 5 or more units, provided that all units are legal?