All Forum Posts by: Edward Mccracken

Does anybody recommend any property management services that a tenant can not reverse the charges?  I have been using buildium for years and it seems they keep on getting worse.  Especially with their support, its takes almost a week for them to respond.  They use to be so good back in the day.  My latest nightmare with them, is that they reversed a charge from 60 days ago, and it seemed like multiple tenants got together and did this, since its an apartment building.  

I'm thinking of switching to turbo tenant.... 

@Brad Polvorosa I went through so many and it was a nightmare.  I'm paying my accountants person to do everything right now.  Its somewhat expensive.  I spent so much time and money trying to get it done cheap.  I recommend having someone educated do it for  a year or two, then start looking at this option.  Get things on track first.  

Brian has some decent points.  Let me add my two cents in.... 

Water problem was fixed years ago.  Water is still not the best.  It doesn't stop people from moving in.  Most of the really cheap houses are gone.  When they come up for sale, they are usually bought right away.  Same clientele as Dolton, houses are half the price, and rents are somewhat lower than Dolton.  The city doesn't have annual inspection.  They are actually pretty decent to deal with, for me anyways.  I'm sure everyone has a horror story or two.  I actually might be in the beginning stages now of one.  When someone moves out and changing ownership you need an inspection.  This doesn't stop me from buying out there.  

I have a turn key package of 7 properties for sale. The ROI is 20%. These are properties that I have owned for some time, recaptured my investment from the properties and now buying some more and making other investments. Other south suburb citys by Sauk Village are Markham, Country Club Hills, Hazel Crest and Chicago Heights.

The price that I'm asking for the 7 is $348,000 and that is my final number. The eight houses grosses $7,772 per month.

Package Highlights

-I can provide lease ledgers for the properties. 6 out of the 7 pay online through Buildium. The other 2 make deposits at the bank. I refuse to pick up rent.

-None of the properties have carpet. Mostly allure, some laminate and hardwood.

-All properties have the same paint color

-Low property taxes for the Chicago area, and I just got them reduced for the next 3 years.

-Almost all of the properties have recent furnaces, roofs, recently remodeled and certified for occupancy from the city.

-All properties besides 1 has Central AC, that maybe changing soon.

-I can take out the property for $70,000.  I have no problem keeping it.  

I have more several more properties available. Along with some tax liens that I could assign to you. I may split these up but you will not get the bulk discount.

I will not deal with people who do not have any rental properties, unless you provide proof of funds right away and I'm not letting this packaged get wholesaled.

Property management available, I will help out with the transition....

Message me for details and leave your number...

So this might be a complicated question but those know their accounting / bookkeeping well, should know this… I'm getting conflicting answers between my accountant and bookkeeper. The problem is convincing my VA bookkeeper she's wrong, but other people agreed with her in the past. Either way I don't know the correct answer and that needs to be fixed!

I have been using building for a year now and love it! My business set up is complicated, too me and if anyone else has suggestions let me know.  Please do not give me legal advice about the setup, I know the flaws. I just need straight accounting principles or whatever you want to call my mess.

I have my management company in buildium for rent collections we can call it a rent management company. It does not make any income for repairs or anything that has to do with managing, just rent collection. I didn’t want to co-mingle funds with different llc’s in my own name. For example, one llc property deposits the money in my personal bank account, then I make the deposit in the proper llc account.

To keep things simple, I have a rent management company, then lets say I own 5 in my personal name, 5 in my llc, and then I manage 5 properties in another llc for another person. All my llc’s are single membered, not that it matters. Everyone makes the rent payment in buildum to the rent management company then gets distributed accordingly. Now this is where it might get complicated… I need to make active more active income. So all of the income from the property management fee’s I collect are in my personal name and all of the repair profits are also. So I’m a vendor in there that gets paid for this.

I really don’t think my bookkeeper is squeezing me for work, because she can barely keep up with what I give her now but she is telling me that I need a separate quickbook file for each of my llc’s to properly track everything and not to keep the expenses for the llc in buildium because it messes everything up. I don’t get why? I did have a few people tell me this before which is why I’m not convinced that my bookkeepers wrong.

My accountant looked over everything today and ask me why do I have all of these separate quickbooks file? She was telling me that buildium tracks all the expenses on the properties and that is what she needs.

So I guess my question is, is buildium a full service accounting program for the goofy situation I have? I have heard people complain before about their property reports but not this. I think its common also to have a set of quickbooks and buildium account.

THANKS!

I love buildium also as of now.  Its been a 1 1/2 years.  I did run through the same problems Marla had but I worked through most of them.  Still having some issues that I have to figure out still.  I love their support. I do have to wait 20 minutes sometimes and they do not call you back when you ask them too. I'm just happy that who ever I talk to is super helpful.  I'm going to be creating a new post on the problem with buildium I am having. I dont know if its a full accounting program for me.  Any help would be appreciated! 

I'm getting high tech now with using all of buildiums features. I'm running into an issue with their bill paying ability and transferring money from accounts. So I have a VA doing all of my bookkeeping, but in order to give them access to the banking features I also have to give them access to bill paying. Is there a work around for this? How does everyone else do this? Or do you take the chance that they can send money to who ever? Any help or suggestions would be great!

I emailed Buildium and ask and this is what they responded with:

Thanks for reaching out! You will want to customize a user role (Settings > User roles) to have View and Edit access for most permissions, however you will want to set the user role's Accounting Menu > Banking permission to View access only.

The Accounting Menu > Banking permission restricts:

Access to bank accounts for the user's properties

Access to bank accounts not associated with any property

Ability to pay bills, owners, vendors by check or EFT

Ability to record checks, issue refunds, reverse payments

To reiterate - in order to prevent these users from sending checks or transferring money, they would also not have Edit access to the above features. These features tend to go hand in hand and are toggled via the same permission - there is no current functionality to edit user access on a more minute level.

Interesting topic... I'm almost positive that it wouldn't increase due to an LLC owning the house but it probably will trigger the re-assessment when changing titles. If you're doing this to try and hide what you own, once its in your name it can always be tracked back to you...

Get some rmr-86 and get your handy man to spray it. No need for remediation. The stuff works just like the video. It save me save me thousands of dollars.

The first challenge you would be starting an account. The second one is finding a bank that will open up an account like this. I have had the hardest time finding a bank that will do this for me. The only one I found is Charles Schwab.