All Forum Posts by: Cliff H.

No XP using WLI as leverage, but did a ton of reading on the topic of dividend paying WLI a few years back. Ultimately not for me, but some useful breakdown on the topic below. Con http://whitecoatinvestor.com/debunking-the-myths-of-whole-life-insurance Pro http://www.seekingalpha.com/article/981891

Home warranty comparison worksheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11qwkr9747B4cwFCKyzLZUFSWvd7t4EAIRLoZk2wu3Lk

Most home warranties only cover up to $1500-$200 per system and come with high deductibles and limited covered systems, increasing rapidly yo $600-$800/year if you really want something that'll cover your plumbing or appliances as well as a litany of stuff they like to cover that basically never fails anyway. I have a spreadsheet comparing almost very home warranty or there and what the costs and catches are. Happy to post back here if useful.

PS: found a good post from Nancy Neville off a separate/similar thread that outlines some of the functions QuickBooks and others provide. May be preaching to the choir for those doing this for years, but a good overview for us DIY accountants: 

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/517/topics/245930-the-power-of-quickbooks-for-landlords

Also, @Sanjay Patel and @Steven Hamilton II or others on Xero, are you currently off one of the plans listed on their pricing page? Seems a bit pricier than the standard QuickBooks for small biz offerings: 

• Xero: https://www.xero.com/us/pricing
• QuickBooks: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/var/pricing

Appreciate the different perspectives here. As someone who's managed 15 rental properties on old school Quicken then over to creative categorization/tagging in Mint exported to Excel at year end, I have always been told I am doing it wrong by ignoring QuickBooks. What I am hearing is that other than financial reporting and (from what I understand) providing a separate login for my tax attorney to pull reports from QuickBooks online, I am not missing much by doing it manually? 

Been reading a ton of posts/perspectives on this lately. Seems there are some real disagreements on best approach, though all agree with insurance as a base protector, many stating that until you hit a certain threshold portfolio size/equity LLCs may be overkill.

Then there is risk of calling loans due based on quit claims at close, restrictions on warranty deeds, and additional risk exposure by having title transfers.  

Frankly, after listening to BP #197 and Chris Hereen's approach of buying direct into LLCs, I question whether the approach of trying to leveraging traditional financing, yet treating it as a income biz makes sense if the goal is growing your R/E biz quickly anyway. The best investments are treated as a separate entity anyway, so why not start off with them that way rather than having to shuffle things around after the fact? 

Had similar experiences with FortuneBuilders @Helen Kirk @Jayakrishna Bommasamudram: over-priced, hard selling, constant upselling reinforcing the fact they likely make more money on  "mentoring" newbies than doing actual work themselves. They're chasing the very outdated high pressure sales model that folks like Brandon and Josh here have done a great job in calling out for what it is.

@Clay W. are you referring to FortuneBuilder's solution or the Realeflow's Hammerpoint rehab estimator functionality? My guess is the FB guys just whitelabeled Realeflow's product and sell it as an affiliate since that's all already available via Realeflow's $99/mo pricing tier. I did just email their support team and they confirmed they do not currently offer it as a sepate purchase:

I found an older blog post of theirs that describes functionality in more detail. Maybe some of you guys that saw the FB guys' stuff can confirm if this is or is not what they were hawking in their sales mentorship seminars? 

Hi @Roger Laughary another vote for Cozy.co for those starting out. They are in a different category than the legacy, bigger players like Buildium, AppFolio, etc in that they a design-driving team focused on usability around core features smaller landlords need most: automated rent collection, tenant screening, and electronic rental applications. I was on their initial beta rollout and they have done a great job in iterating through features and slowly adding onto their product over time while maintaining a level of simplicity and low-cost unique in an industry known for complexity and inflated pricing. The founders were involved in early days of WalmartLabs so they really know what they are doing with web-based solutions. 

While not a solution for tracking maintenance requests, e-signing leases, etc I can do all that already through tools like Docusign and Google Forms for free anyway, kicking out end of year Schedule E data via creative tagging and categorization in Mint or other online finance aggregator suites. 

YMMV, but for me my main focus is running a business on the go and focusing on customer relationship building over maintaining complex software solutions. 

Hey @Jon S. I've been trying zInspector recently. They offer a free version for < 5 properties that does not appear to be feature limited so it may be a good option to try out. Not a fan of the inspections being essentially unmodifiable once created, but did provide me a better way of walking through the property with my contractors and capturing a point in time repair list. 

Have not seen it mentioned yet, but have been trialing zInspector for tracking basic move-in/out inspections, but it is admittedly focused on just point-in-time snapshots where I am increasingly looking at an moving from inspection to actual cost estimator and a means to share with contractors to compare bids. This like puts it closer to some of the other suites out there. 

PS: to save others from the SPAM, here's the direct link to the lite version of the House Flipping Spreadsheet referenced above: 

https://www.houseflippingspreadsheet.com/demo-version.html