All Forum Posts by: Dan Bosak

Quote from @JP Marzano:

Hi Dan,

I've worked with Easy St quite a bit. They can be a bit on the pricey side and they can be selective on the development/construction side, but overall, they're solid. Ask for Josh or Matt. 

Thanks Matt -- appreciate the input.  I have a term sheet from Matt and did think it was slightly high but they are only online lender that I've heard anything positive about.  So I'd rather go with someone legit and who will close vs trying to save a little $ and screwing up a deal.  Thanks again

I typically use regional banks to fund my deals but my 2 go-to banks have either slowed or fully stopped investment loans so recently I've connected with several online brokers but all came from ads or they reached out to me vs personal recommendations and intros so I have concerns.  The 4 I've talked to are: Blue Gate Capital, Easy Street, Bombora, and Mortgage Calculator Company. 

I saw some old negative posts on BP about Blue Gate but nothing within last 2 years and I didn't find info on the others. 

Has anyone worked with any of these companies and have any feedback or recommendations for others I should talk to? 

Everything I'm looking to refi or buy at the moment is in NJ if that affects your suggestions.

Thanks, Dan

There's debate if they have any authority to impose that but regardless in my market, the courts are closed so it's irrelevant.  So, since courts are close, are there any options to get tenants to move out?  

Is anyone having any success with removing tenants during COVID in an area where eviction courts are still closed?  

I have a few tenants who were in the eviction process prior to the COVID shut-down and courts closed so we could not remove.  Now months later, they are still not paying and courts are still not open for us to resume the process.  We've reached out with: attempt to create a partial payment plan, provided info on every relevant grant or assistance program available to them, provided info on local employers who were hiring, and offered cash for keys if they moved out. None of these have helped with a few problem tenants and we seem to be stuck carrying them until courts reopen which will likely be a few months away at best.  

The only option we've found is to:
- Send to collections now for current outstanding balance
- File for eviction if/when we can finally do that again
- Send to Collections for final balance after eviction

I don't foresee this doing much of anything in the short-term other than getting the inevitable collection process moving now.  

Has anyone had any success with other options? 

Spoke with my attorney and I cannot do RUBS but I can bill back for what I am able to measure.  All of the meters that I've found require a single main supply to the apartment and plumbing in these old buildings is not so simple and re-plumbing it would not be easy.  Do small point of use meters exist where I could install at every fixture?  Even without over-use bills are $800+ per year per apartment so for my 6-unit, It could still save me $5k/year.    

Darren thanks for input and we will be doing that.  Plan is to replace all toilets and shower heads with low flow during tenant turnover but we might accelerate that process.  But regardless, if I can find a way to easily measure and bill back for actual use, it'll prevent a lot of issues.  If tenants are paying for it, I'm sure they will let us know when there is an issue. 

Thanks Kurt and Chris -- really wanted to do something other than RUBS since I don't think it encourages tenants to conserve and can end up being unfair to some tenants who are but if that's the only option then that'll have to be what I do.  

Chris, I sent in info to Guardian and I saw notes about submetering being illegal and then also something about only allowed for water.  After posting this question, I also sent a note to my landlord/tenant attorney so I make sure that I don't waste time on options that I can't ultimately implement.   I'll let you know if I find out anything useful.

I found several old forums related to this but none that seem to answer mine and likely many other landlord's needs and I am hopeful that there is some newer technology that can provide a solution.  

I have several smaller multi-family properties with split utilities but a common water meter (4-7 units).  For one of my properties, the most recent bill equated to $283/unit/month in a building with average rent of $800/month. I suspect that it is 1 or 2 tenants in particular that have toilets running constantly and/or are just abusing the fact that they don't have to pay for water.  

Are there any options for sub-metering the water bills to individual apartments?

These are old buildings so the plumbing is probably not a direct run from the basement, so I would ideally need to measure water in at the point of use.  In most cases, they have separate hot water heaters, so I could just monitor how much hot water is used per apartment and take that % of the entire bill, this will not be exact so may cause other issues.

Any suggestions and ideally specific products for this or a company in South Jersey (Camden County) that does this would be great.

Thanks

Dan 

Does anyone know of a lender in the South Jersey / Philly markets that will do a 1st position loan at 70-75% and allow a seller to carry back the balance as a 2nd position lien?  I am looking specifically for Camden, Burlington & Gloucester Counties in NJ and in and immediately around Philadelphia in PA.

If you have a bank or ideally a specific banker that you recommend, please let me know.

I had a portfolio lender that would allow for seller to carry back a 2nd as long as the bank was in 1st position at 75% LTV. They reorganized and although they will still allow, their loan terms are so un-favorable (higher rates, lower amortization and lower LTV), it doesn't make sense to use them. None of my other banks are willing to do a loan with more than 75% (80% if multi) including any seller carry back.

Thanks Deanna, hopefully I will be able to find the sweet spot that satisfies every tenant but I've had issues with that in my 5-unit building; we actually replaced all of the old manual valves on each raditor so that the tenants could regulate the heat down as needed.  But, this was not inexpensive so it going through the effort and cost, I'd still prefer to make it more automated.  I like the idea of simply adjusting up to compensate for the coldest day; I may just look into a system that I can control remotely since I don't want to do anything that will add to the ongoing time required to run and manage the property; there is normally enough going on when the temp drops.