All Forum Posts by: Darnell J.

Hi Matt, Have you looked into sub-metering? Electrical submetering involves the installation power meters (also called power monitors, electrical meters, or energy monitors) that can measure energy usage after it reaches the primary utility meter. For instance, if you have a duplex with only one meter, you can install these power meters for each side of the home and get usage reports for each home. It offers the ability to monitor energy usage for individual tenants electric usage, gas usage and also water usage. Setra Systems is one company that makes these products. I believe they have a YouTube video that describes this process much better than I have.

Hi Ashley, If you have not read this book yet. I would highly recommend starting with Brandon Turner’s book “The Book on Investing in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down: Real Life Strategies for Investing in Real Estate Using Other People's Money”. The book gives great insight on how to find creative financing, gives technical directions to follow and is easy to read. Good luck.

@Julia Bykhovskaia That is a great idea. I have a duplex that I Airbnb and the only true issue between guests are the noise the other guests are making. 

For myself, short-term rentals have yielded better financial returns than single-family rentals from my duplex, however it is much more labor intensive. One thing a person should consider before making the decision is that once you convert your multi-family unit to an Airbnb property you now have to pay for things you could normally have your tenants pay for. Such as: lawn care services, televisions, furniture, decor, utilities, wifi, cable, cleaning services, towels, bedding, cutlery, cookware, refreshments, keyless entry locks, etc. 

I think it just depends on your market. For some markets I think to Airbnb your multi-family units will yield greater return after expenses, but for some it may not. I strongly recommend including all the above in your expense calculations. If you spend an initial $5,000/each unit on furniture and decor and $500 a month for each unit in utility, supplies and cleaning expenses...the additional earnings a month from Airbnb versus single-family rental may not yield a greater return. Its all in the numbers for me.

@Mike H. Jones Very informative posts. Thanks!

@Robert Leonard Would you happen to know of a good attorney that has experience with a Quiet Title in New Orleans? Do you have any personal experience with completing a Quiet Title? I'm somewhat at a lost as to what the entire process entails. Thanks.

@Reginald Winn Did you ever get your Quiet Title complete? I have to do one for a property I purchased in New Orleans and can't seem to find anyone with experience doing a Quiet Title. I purchased a tax certificate from Civic Source, was able to win bid at 100% interest in it. The end of the redemption period is approaching and I would love to know what to expect next. Cost? Time? Level of Effort? Can you recommend a good attorney for such action? Is it something I could do on my own?

Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

@Brandin Johnson Did you ever get your Quiet Title complete? I have to do one for a property I purchased in New Orleans and can't seem to find anyone with experience doing a Quiet Title. I would love to know what to expect. Cost? Time? Level of Effort? Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

@Anton Ivanov Congrats on your success and thanks for sharing. You seem to have scaled up pretty quickly. In the beginning phases, was there ever a time when you used some of the reserves from your existing rentals to purchase a new property? What is the general consensus on doing such? I'm not a proponent of it, but I'm curious to know what other investors are doing to scale up faster.

@Jordan Moorhead So, with all the mentions of Cozy.co I signed up for an account and added a few of my properties for trail run. It is a great platform and is really easy to use. I do however have to rate TenantCloud as a better platform than Cozy.co. TenantCloud does practically everything Cozy.co does, plus more. The graphical user interface for both look very similar...its almost like TenantCloud copied Cozy.co platform and added some additional features to it.

Some highlighted features of TenantCloud are:

• Ability to customize online rental applications
• A File Manager for each property, it categorizes all uploaded receipts and documents for each property
• A Document Template to upload custom lease agreements, house rules, pet rules, and other addendum to the lease. 
• Allow tenants to sign lease agreements electronically.
• Receive online ACH payments with TCPayments (Dwolla) - Tenants pay rent online
• Allows you to list multiple owners for a property and enter all detail information about property, such as the purchase price, purchase date, insurance, taxes, down payment, annual interest rate, current loan balance, loan terms, mortgage loan company, amortization schedule, depreciation years/schedule, utility providers, and much more.
• Online rental applications  & vendor to screen your applicants
• Built-in renters insurance vendor for when your tenant signs lease
• Auto invoicing and late fees
• Free listing website
• Tenants can submit maintenance request online using a very cool and easy to use interface, of which you can easily assign/forward the maintenance request to one of your service professionals.

The Financial Reports sections has a number of great reports that can be auto generated, such as:

• Depreciation Tracker report that allows you to track annual depreciation for your residential and commercial rental property, which is also used in your tax preparation report.
• Expense report that provides the expenses based on the property or a specific unit. It is available for accrual type accounting only. The report shows all paid expense invoices for all properties and units excluding liabilities (deposit, prepaid rent, pet deposit, etc.). This report can be searched based on owner.
• Monthly Property report shows the property accounting based on each unit. The income and expenses including payment to owner and management fees. This report is designed to be for a property manager in order to deliver to an owner.
• Operating Statement report that shows the invoices of which have been marked “paid” for both income and expenses. The report includes records for all properties and units excluding liabilities categories (deposit, prepaid rent, pet deposit, etc.). The purpose of this report is to monitor cash-flow coming in and out of the rental property.
• Rent Roll report that shows all tenants that have an active lease in each property. The report includes the tenant's name, deposits held, market rent and the balance owed. This report can be searched by property owner or property.
• Tax Preparation Report that shows all income and expenses for a specific period of time. This report is designed to help a landlord file their taxes. The report will include all income as well as expenses, management fees paid, depreciation and interest expense over the set time period. Deposits, Prepaid rent and other liabilities will not be included.
• Tenant Statement report that shows a tenant's accounting based on when it was due. The report includes deposits, prepaid rent and other deposits. It will also include all invoices outstanding to date.
• Provider Statement Report report that shows a vendor's and service professional's accounting based on when it was paid. Report includes all unpaid bills. Any blank or empty amounts in the Paid column are amounts that have not been entered as paid.

There are some other pretty nice features to it that I'm not listing. Its FREE, so it doesn't hurt to sign up for an account and compare it to others such as Cozy.co. Like I said the interfaces are very similar so you won't have much of a learning curve moving from Cozy.co to TenantCloud. I personally also like the Dashboard of TenantCloud better...again more features. I hope this helps. Enjoy.

Thanks for the reply @Mike Wood. My mention of six months is the annulment period the former owner has after I serve them with the lawsuit. I’m fully aware that the redemption period is 3 years or 18 months for a dilapidated or vacant property. My biggest struggle so far has been finding a trustworthy experienced attorney to speak to about a quiet title.