All Forum Posts by: Chinmay J.

This is what you need to do. Hire your own electrician.  They need to prepay you, and you will pay your guy.  Once they leave, if they need to remove those fans and take them with them, you would need them to prepay for removing the fan, and any other ancillary work that needs to be done on the project.  If they don't then it's your property. Of course check the local laws and such. 

Put all this in writing and get them to sign off on it. 

Make it as rigid as possible for them to do it.  When you do this 9/10 people will say... Never mind.. We will go to Walmart and buy a regular stationary fan. This is what you really want.. You don't want tenants making changes to your property, or even proposing such things. 

 Good Question... I would like to know as well... I wouldn't mind starting out small like 5K or so.. Just to get my feet wet. 

 Those are some pearls of wisdom right there. Yes, I let the plumber lady get way too comfortable with me. I even accepted friend request from her on Facebook. She saw all my vacation pics.. Terrible idea I know.. No wonder she even got the idea to pull a fast one.. 

The thing is that I am overall a friendly person, and somewhat of a kid at heart.. To be able to be even keeled, and not letting people too close to you is quite a virtue.. I admire that.. 

 It's a water heater for a Single Family Household.. 4 people live there.. The tenant, her 2 kids, and old mother.. There is no need for any frills or anything fancy.. This is not for a multi family unit serving 10 households.. lol.  Trying to sell something to someone that they don't need is another way of cheating..

 I understand the getting an exception from the management (as I believe it's called) part, but that's just one element.  I am talking about the whole picture, where the lender lied to me about there being a "lag" with websites publishing the rates, then lied again and bad mouthed other lenders for being "notorious" for blowing locks.. This whole thing is a deceptive business practice IMHO. 

Perhaps you didn't see my link where I had posted my original post. Original Post

OK I  might have given the wrong impression in my initial write up that I acted like Trump would in Apprentice, but that was just to grab attention of the reader. 

I did give both of them chance to work. A little more to the lender since mortgage lending is a transparent business, but he just couldn't do anything below 4.25%.  The thing I didn't like about him was he started badmouthing other lenders calling them a "joke", and dissuading me from going their way, to the point of telling downright lies that a certain lender blows locks all the time.. Not true.. If I were a newbie, it would have seriously confused me. Not very professional. 

I am wondering how much he would be making more in commission by selling me the mortgage at 4.37% vs say 4.125%. 

With the plumber lady... I don't know man.. How come $1200 difference, which brings the final bill to half the originally quoted price doesn't make the light bulb go off in one's head..   As Arthur Conan Doyle  is known to have famously stated, "When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable must be the truth". 

Thankfully, all my real estate activities are self managed. I do a lot better job dotting my I's and crossing my T's than anyone else.  I had a good sized portfolio coming up in Richmond comprising of duplexes, but sold it all this year, and focusing on what could be bought locally. The PM I hired in Richmond area warrants a whole new post.  This was after firing 2 PMs.  It finally dawned on me that I am probably not cut out for long distance investing.. 

Recently I had to end two of my long term relationships, as I realized that I was being taken for a ride.  You build relationships in real estate so you could create a win-win situation.  Established relationships help in cutting down the time spent in searching for desired product or service.  A quick call to the plumber, a quick call to the electrician can get things moving rather quickly putting you ahead of the eight ball.  The vendor or contractor gets  income w/o additional advertising and also more referrals down the road.  They say it's easier to keep existing customer than acquiring new ones. 

But the other side of that is one has to be careful that they aren't getting screwed over and it's good to do your due diligence despite of how established relationship is. 

Instance # 1-  I have had a long time plumber. Mom & Pop operation. Folksy wife handles the books, and husband takes care of the plumbing. They got like one additional person working for them. Real small operation.  Prices were very reasonable in the beginning, and seemed like overall nice people.  

The earlier this year, I had to replace a water heater due to age, so asked for a quote.  The lady quoted me $2400 for 50 gallon gas water heater.  The regular one (not the tankless one)  The breakdown was $900 labor and $1600 price.  Something seemed very off, so I decided to do some shopping.  Was able to find a Home Depot approved contractor, and get the whole thing done for $1400 including permits.  I was clearly being taken advantage of after the contractor and I developed somewhat of a friendship.  Will never use them again or recommend them to anyone.. 

When I called her out on this, she gave all kinds of dumb excuses ranging from, she is a novice to the guy working for her gave her incorrect model # of the water heater.. 

Instance # 2  The lender that I have been working with for last 5 yrs gave me an outrageous quote of 4.37% APR. I was able to find 4.00% APR in the market after I shopped around a little bit. Even the most expensive one I found was 4.25%, which is 0.125% cheaper than my original lender. Again, I have provided this person a ton of business through referrals for close friends and family members. Looks like he got too comfy with me.

For more detailed post on this topic Read This.. I may use him again, but he will have to compete with the rest and truly earn the business. 

How often do you guys and gals have to say, "You are fired !!" from your boardroom?  Lets hear some stories. 

If the buyer is a newbie, income from day 1 is a good selling point.  But anyone who is experienced knows that it's only as good as the quality of the tenant you have in there. It takes time to get good tenants in B&C neighborhood.  Those tenants don't mean anything unless they have proven 5-6 months of history of paying on time and respecting the property. 

If I am the buyer, I'd much rather have the freedom to put in my own tenant than inherit someone. 

On the contrary, you can always explain how good business to proposition it is to get a vacant unit, even to a newbie. 

  I was going to post the exact same thing.. You nailed it right on the head.. 

@Jacob G. Why do you want someone who is part time? What makes you think part time is better than full time?  Property Managers by default are thieves. I sold my long distance properties, because of the fact that after struggling for 2 yrs, I couldn't find a PM who does half as good a job as I do managing my own properties.  I got tired of firing old, and hiring new PMs...