All Forum Posts by: Christopher Ryan

Last year we bought a commercial property and put it into an LLC immediately. The accounting was fairly simple. Everything was tracked with the LLC immediately.

This year, my wife and I bought a 4 plex and used conventional financing, because of this, we had to get the mortgage in our name initially (and transfer it, which our broker assured us it not a problem). Our lawyer suggested we wait one billing cycle before changing it over (so it would be Jan 1 of next year, so we pre-paid 2 months at closing).

I am still waiting to talk to my account on this one, but I assume all the earnings are in our names. The rents need to come to our personal accounts, etc. We can't attribute any of it to our new LLC (for this new property, we are keeping it separate from the commercial property on purpose) until the LLC owns it, correct? How does depreciation, etc change when things are transferred? Is there a guide for how to do this properly?

Thanks in advance!

 This is my problem.  I haven't been able to pull myself away from my normal life (4 young-ish kids) and current job to go to a meetup (I need to make it happen).  That being said, I have been seeing enough properties that I am learning the market and starting to see the same investors at showings...

I am 40. My wife and I bought a mixed use (4 residential, 1 office) property last year and just closed on a 4 plex last week.  Still learning the ropes (lots to learn).  Really need to figure out how not to buy retail. Had a plan to buy a few more properties before the year end, but the multi-family market seems to be too hot right now, hard to find good value.  I would like to buy 2-3 4 plex sized properties a year (or get in on a bigger multi family).

So I settled on using Tenant Cloud to keep track of general tenant information and maintenance stuff and wave for all the accounting.  It is a pain to do things in two different worlds, but it worked well enough. I found wave plenty fine for general accounting and I came up with a system that worked well for me as well as my accountant.  

That being said, we recently hired a property manager for our properties, so using Tenant Cloud is redundant with their system. The property manager handles a lot of the accounting and takes care of 100% of what tenant cloud was doing (although not as pretty), so I jut do the overall accounting for the business in wave and leave the details up to the property manager's software (I think they use buildium or something, but it is presented as their own website of some sort).

My concern was having records that I could easily gather when it comes time to sell. I know that the sellers of the property we bought did NOT have their act together and I wanted a system where I could easily get profit and losses and rent rolls very easily.  Our property manager's website has all of that data (along side our accounting in wave), so I no longer need those details kept on my own.

To an update on my post (above). So far, Tenant Cloud is working well, but I don't think it is great for general business expenses, etc (unless I am overthinking things).  I have 5 "units" spread out in 2 buildings on 1 property. Some expenses are for a building, some are for a unit, and some are for the whole property.  I am currently using Wave for accounting, but may try out quickbooks as well...I am not accountant, so I could be overthinking everything as well.

We are closing on our first multi-family property very soon (also our first REI). I am trying to figure out if the accounting in TC is enough to that I don't need to use QuickBooks (well, I have been looking at alternatives, such as Wave). It would be great if everything was in one place.

My wife and I are just about to close on our first rental property. It is a mixed use unit with 1 commercial and 4 residential properties.  To start, my wife is going to do the daily property management duties and I oversee big decisions and help out.  It has been a long journey from deciding we wanted to get into rental properties to actually finding something we were interested and getting through all the details.

I have gone through many posts, web pages, etc, about Accounting Software (most people seem to use Quickbooks) and seen many posts about "Property Management" software.  What I can't figure out is there a single solution for both. Something that can help me track my units in my property (and future properties) as well as cover all the expenses/incomes the business will occur to make it easier for me or an accountant at tax time.  My wife is currently planning on just using Excel, but I suspect, we will find the limits of that quickly.

So, for all the solutions out there, are there ones that provide the "whole package" for the small number of units have have, or we just best off with Quickbooks (haven't ever even tried, I am software savvy, but my wife thinks too much software will make her life harder) and keeping track of tenants and specifics about late rent, etc, on our own?  

Throughout this entire process, I have found that I don't know the answer to most of my questions until I am deep in it (for example, it took me talking to several commercial lenders about various different properties before I could really grasp how commercial loans worked (and their various different products, etc).  Because of this, I have been furiously trying to research the "right" solution before we have even closed on our property (which is driving my wife nuts, and she is the one who would benefit), going as far as signing up for free trials of several solutions to see what they felt like (tried Rentigo, Rentulations, and SimplifyEm), but haven't been excited about what I have seen (none of those provided enough that I wouldn't need Quickbooks, some where ugly, some more then we need, etc).

Any advice on where to start? Do we start with Quickbooks online as well as Excel or something for renter specific things (tenants, etc)? Do we just try to do the whole business using an Excel spreadsheet? 

Thanks in advance for any advice! Lots of things to learn!

Thanks. I have not heard back from Morris invest. They really did make it seem "easy", so my too good to be true radar was blaring, but I had to do more investigation. Luckily this has lead me here and I can continue to learn/investigate before making "newbie" mistakes. That being said, I always find I have to really get my feet wet and make mistakes before I even know what kind of questions/things to look for, which is why I was willing to investigate Morris Invest more. The podcasts are still incredibly useful, even if they might also be an Ad in disguise for the business.

I talked to Larry from Morris Invest a few days ago. I felt he was very polite and not pushy at all.  He did say that their volume on home sales are WAY up (like 5-10/month at the beginning of the year to 50-60/month now).  The house he sent me that was rehabbed was in horrible condition before the rehab (as in, you couldn't pay most people to stay there for a night). Honestly, that rehab didn't make me feel better, but rather made me scared (what do the other houses look like in that neighborhood)!  But maybe they have a strategy, they can buy all the crappy houses in a neighborhood, clean them up, and bring up the values of everything.  BTW, I am a newbie investor that hasn't invested in real estate at all, but was intrigued by the Morris podcasts.