All Forum Posts by: Paul J.

Vantastic Solutions - http://vantasticsolutions.com/

@Jennifer Fernéz There are some other threads here, somewhere, where folks go in to detail on what they do.  I purchased a duplex in a low income area last year and I did things like extra coats of poly on the hardwood floors, reinforcing the towel bars, shower curtain rods, and toilet paper holders, replacing destroyed vinyl flooring with real tile, replacing stove surround paneling with tile, etcetera.  My goal was to touch these repairs once and keep them from being a problem in the future.  We don't furnish with the most expensive fixtures, but we do choose things like metal faucets over plastic with the hope that it will last a long time.  

Susan, thanks for the reply.  I am going to take a look at a few of them over the next few months and make a decision at that point.  Rentec also seems to offer quite a few features that rent even active yet in Buildium for $15 per month.  I agree that being able to do business from the tablet is key.  My holdings are also out of state, and I share my PM duties with an in-town maintenance person so cloud-based is also pretty key for us to be able to interoperate.

I guess we cant edit in the new BP yet, but I swear that was neatly formatted in bullet points when it left me!  

We're very small, but this is my model right now.  I have 3 units and my maintenance guy also does showings and paperwork.  He is a part time 1099 contractor for me.  He owns his own business doing cleaning and renovation work already so our business together is just one part of his work, which sometimes can cause some scheduling conflicts but we have worked thru it pretty well.

• Tenants pay rent direct electronically or by bank deposit
  
• I sign the leases here and send electronically, with the maintenance guy handling the paperwork and also witnessing the signing.
  
• He gets paid about 1/2 of what a full service PM company would per month for being available and responding to minor repair calls (1 hour), and 1/2 a months rent for handling showings and performing in-person screening.  He's also supposed to drive by monthly and inspect inside every 6 months.

• For-rent phone calls come to a google voice number advising of unit currently for rent, instructions for how to obtain an application online,  and to contact maintenance guy to schedule showing.  I think this helps a lot in screening as our internet-based process self-selects for folks who can perform these tasks ahead of time .  We dont like to accept any kind of paper money unless there is some odd circumstances or at move-in.
  
• I perform tenant screening and follow up on application verification items, as well as all the bookkeeping and processes.
• He gets first shot at any maintenance work that he can perform himself and bills hourly, uses my company Home Depot card for supplies.  Otherwise he makes the properties available as needed for licensed trades and inspections.
• We use tools like Google Drive, Buildium, Chase Quickpay, Camscanner, and lots of photographs to bridge the physical divide and work together remotely

I have to say that the market I work in is the area I originally grew up in, so this was not some maintenance group off the street but someone I had already known for years, but this process is working pretty well.  My plan is to visit the area the properties are in 2x per year as I can, although it was only once last year.

Well, at this point I am trying to build a scalable system so there's less re-work on the back end as things get larger.  I am currently focusing on a single out-of-state market, and I hope to bring in some partners or otherwise offer services to other folks in my local California market who want to purchase properties out-of-state.

I also appreciate the reports and financial reporting, it made doing my taxes very easy last year and it also helps keep my maintenance guy and I on-track with to-do's and their priority.

Sure, theres probably a handful of other tools out there that could fill in different pieces of this puzzle but I wsas hoping to lay the groundwork once and continue at a pace of a couple units per year, and I think it's especially important to have a professional and simple system in place when presenting the processes to a potential partner.

Anyways, I am not jumping ship at this point but seeing that my year paid-in-full expires in February, I figured it's a good time to be sure that I liek the product more than any others, as January 1 would pretty much be the perfect time for me to cut the accounting over to another potential system.

Does anyone else have things they like or disliek about another service thats at a similar price-point?

I just got a note telling me my monthly cost for Buildium's services will climb from $25 to $40 a month.  This is significant to me since, I only have 3 units to begin with and I will be paying as much as if I had them helping me with 24.

I am sure I am not the only person who will be shopping around and trying other services out so my question is - what cloud-based property management software are you using now, what is the monthly rate, how many units do you manage, and what are your likes and dislikes?  I know there are a lot of opinions and threads out there on this very topic, but I started this one assuming a) a small-time landlord or PM, and b) recent comparison as both Buildium and others have been adding features lately.

I am both looking to be as paper-less as possible, and I like to access the service from a tablet on the go.  I also live out of state from my properties but coordinate closely with a single on-site maintenance person,  so I am predominately looking for the web/cloud based services that we can both log into and interact with, and not a quickbooks style solution.

He's talking about rainy day money. What do you do if confronted with an expensive problem, like I was?

Hey I'll make no comment on the numbers, but the situation...

My first deal was a fully occupied duplex. In hindsight, I wish I had done more diligent screening of the current tenants and the situation beforehand, or otherwise negotiated the deal as the seller emptying the units ahead of time.

My plan was to complete the cosmetic renovations on the incoming cashflow in 1-3 years. "Hey, there are tenants in place who are perfectly happy living in the place as-is paying what they pay and the cashflow is there on paper."

Long story short, it was the tenants that the seller was looking to get rid of more than the property. The property was solid, just dirty. The problem is I stressed myself out the first 4 months chasing the tenants for rent that was usually 3 weeks late and sometimes 5. They were non-cooperative and I ended up evicting them both, one at a time, and performing the renovations (and paying lawyers fees) out of my pocket, not the imagined cashflow..

The reality of my situation was, the guy I bought the property from owned it free & clear, and was happy to collect the rent most of the time as long as he didnt have to do too many repairs.. Nothing major was amiss, but it was not what I had planned for and it was a great learning experience for me.

At this point, I am glad to have my renovated units back and it cashflows well with my current tenants. The place is neat, clean, and updated as needed now - but it ended up costing me quite a bit out of my pocket that I did not plan for. I am basically behind by about 2 years on my original plan as my profit was destroyed and any hope of picking up another rental were temporarily dashed because I had to do 2 evictions and 2 turnovers of filthy apartments that I thought could be handled by cashflow in the bank.

I would suggest asking for bank statements or pages of tax returns that illustrate the actual property profit/loss and actual rents paid. I also followed advice found here and had the current tenants and current owner sign estoppel agreements that detailed all of their understandings of the current agreement, which headed off some other problems that we could have had..

No legal advice here, just my experience and hindsight.

I use simplisafe for my vacant units. It operates on the cellular network so no phone wires are needed to transit an alarm to the monitoring service. It has a built in battery backup, so you are covered for short periods of power outage or thieves unplugging it. It's portable and an easy self install, and you can just log into the service website and change the address as you move the unit around so that they know what property is currently alarmed. Cost is the components plus $25 a month for the monitoring and smartphone access, I believe you can pay less I you don't care about the smartphone access. I pay extra for it because it allows me to control access to the property when I'm not there by using the alarm in Combination with a lockbox. I can send a vendor to the house and give them a lockbox code, and know that I can arm and disarm without being there. I just have them check in and out with me by phone. Finally, simplisafe monitoring is prorated by the day so I can just activate and deactivate ate as needed. My local sheriffs department charges a $1 processing gee for a monitored alarm permit so I just file with them if the system is going to a new property.