All Forum Posts by: Derek Vander Veen

Hi @Mark Nugent.  We finance with banks and have had a couple of residential appraisers who have valued our purchases.  Here are a couple had the most comprehensive appraisal reports.

The Appraisal Company
2928 104th Street,
Urbandale, IA 50322
515-727-4700

Jeff Potthoff @ 515-987-0236
Potthoff Appraisals
475 Alices Road, Suite D1
Waukee, IA 50263

Good luck!

Hi Kenton. I'd recommend reaching out to Exit Realty Capital City's property management team.  They're a Des Moines based property manager with 100 - 150 units under management.  You can find them on Facebook. 

Hi @Deena Laugen.  I'd highly recommend reaching out to Exit Realty Capital City's property management team.  They manage around 100 units+, so are a great size to stay focused on all clients.  You can find them on Facebook by searching "Capital City Property Management".  

Hi @Chelsea Hagman.  I'd highly recommend reaching out to the EXIT Realty Capital City property management team.  They're a local property manager based at 70th and Hickman in Urbandale/Des Moines.  They have been professionally managing residential properties in the Des Moines area for years, and currently manage somewhere between 100 and 150 doors.

Hi @A Pudenz Sorry to hear about the bad luck you've been having finding a quality property manager.  I've unfortunately had a similar experience to what you described with one of the groups you mentioned above, so I feel your pain.  For a property manager in the Des Moines, IA metro, I would recommend reaching out to the EXIT Realty Capital City Property Management team.  

We use TC to manage our 11 units, and have found it to be a great PM solution. Not sure how things look when you get to 50+ units, but for us, the accounting feature works great. We use TC as our book of record and then reconcile against our bank activity. It takes ~15 minutes per month to reconcile, but gives us a solid understanding of where we stand financially.  It's far cheaper than utilizing QuickBooks, and easily does the job of providing an all in one accounting software plus many other useful features. It's a great PM value for the price. Hope this honest / independent evaluation helps!

Hi @Alexander Canha.  I decided to go with Tenant Cloud as our property management software, and I couldn't be happier with my experience over the past ~18 months.  For $90/yr we've got everything we need to manage our 11 units, and our residents have all had great things to say about the tenant interface / experience as well.  It also presents a very professional image to residents / applicants given how robust the mobile app is and all that they can do through it.  It makes us a tech friendly option since they can fill out their application, pay rent, submit maintenance requests, view a copy of their lease, see a summary of their lease terms, and view transaction history all from their phone.  

TenantCloud has a lot of features, so I would recommend setting up your portfolio and shadow posting activity for a couple months while you get used to the system, but then once you spend a little time with it I think you'll find it's a great value for the price.  They add new features and enhance existing features through updates regularly, so it's clear they're investing time into continually improving the overall features of the product. 

I use the accounting software, which was something that was missing from a lot of the other PM options we looked at, and have been very pleased with the functionality.  I export our activity once a month into excel to reconcile against our bank balance to confirm all activity has been recorded.  The process for our 11 units generally only takes ~15 minutes a month.

I hope this feedback helps! 

I signed up for Cozy and TenantCloud simultaneously to test which one I liked better.  Cozy was very user friendly, but I ultimately chose TenantCloud because it had the following features Cozy didn't have at that time (~1 year ago).

- online lease templates that could auto populate

- electronic signature

- an accounting feature 

- mobile app

I've been using TenantCloud now for about a year and have been very pleased with it's functionality for the price. I subscribe to the $90/year plan for free rental payments, electronic signature, and Google calendar sync, but if you don't need these features you can use the free version and still get all of the other features. 

Hi, Erik.  Welcome to BP!  I think it's a great idea to spend time doing research now so you're prepared once you're comfortable making your first purchase. I did something similar and read books and attended meetups for a about a year before making my first purchase.  

I own properties in Kansas City, MO where I lived for several years out of college, and now live and invest in Des Moines, IA.  I'd be happy to share some thoughts on books to read, meetups to attend, and areas to focus on that make for good rentals. Feel free to DM me if you'd like. 

I use TenantCloud and built a lease extension agreement with their document template feature It's a one page renewal that lists terms that change (lease termination date, monthly rent, month to month rent once extended lease expires) and State all other terms remain the same as their original lease.