All Forum Posts by: Edward Messer

I hope to bring back a picture of a hamburger like @Nathan Gesner shows above.  I am meeting with the PM company late this week.  

I didn't do a great job of explaining the situation in my original post but added some color in a follow up post.  This rate is for a college rental so there would be a lot more turn over from year to year, as well as the likely need of more active management.  

As many have mentioned, it will depend on the services included in the fee.  I'll hope to be able to share a lot of information this weekend after the meeting.  

Stay tuned...

@Andrew Postell Great idea.  I have a yard guy who is pretty on top of things.  You can tell how much of a noob I am that I didn't even think to ask him.  Of course, I have never met him in person - we just text and Venmo.  But he'd be a good place to start.  

@Kevin Sobilo I'd intend for this rental to be a college rental.  It is a 5 Bedroom that is covering my costs now - with my daughter not paying rent.  So I figure I do have some leeway on the fees if I had 5 full-paying tenants.  (I would expect that the tenants would all come in as a group for friends - it is only 1,600 sf after all.  Pretty tight for 5 strangers)  

And I agree that a college rental would likely be more work, although with my daughter and her friends it has been pretty easy.  Not likely if I didn't know the tenants personally. 

Thanks for your input, fellas.  Merry Christmas.  

Thanks for the perspective @Rick Albert. I hadn't considered that they may be rolling in those additional items into the percentage. Given it is a college town and my SFR would be for annual college students, it would make sense to roll the renewals, marketing, etc into the monthly rate because it would most likely being turned over every year.

I hadn't gone any further with this PM than a intro email to see if they were taking new clients and they volunteered the rate.  I wanted to get the BP community's perspective before deciding whether or not to go further with them.  

And thanks too @Mel F.  The minimum rate until a certain threshold is certainly a good point too.  As well as the potential extra work with College students.  

I obviously need to do some more work on this but these comments have helped point me in the right direction.  Thank you. 

I have a verbal quote for 14% of monthly rents for 3rd party property management.  I know typical rates are 8-10, sometimes I've seen 12%.  But could a PM be rock star enough to warrant a 14% rate?  I just can't see the value in it, but I've never used a PM.  My property is in a college town 3 hrs away.  

@Luis Balcazar I'd be grateful if you would share anything you find with PMs in Fort Wayne.  I live in Fort Wayne and while my only rental property is in Bloomington IN, I'm looking for a single family property in town and will not be self managing.  I'd love to hear your experiences with PMs in town.  

Plan for that $80k to go over $100k or more.  If it doesn't, great.  But odds are pretty high that you'll come across some problems that can only be solved by additional funds.  Better to have that available up front.  

The utility in my case politely told me to pound sand when I asked if they'd work with me on the $300.  It didn't cost me anything to ask...

Again, depending upon your situation, if you thought the $500 bill would harm the relationship with the tenant you might consider going halvsies with them on it.  But you'd want to know for sure you had the issue resolved.  You don't want to sign up for half of their water bill each month till it is fixed.  

@Tyler Warner I'll start with a potential source of the leak - from personal experience.  Toilet flapper.  My rental hit me with a $300 water/sewer bill during a month that it was unoccupied.  Turns out the seller used the toilet on the last day and the flapper stuck open resulting in 23,000 gallons of water going down the drain.  It's sneaky because you can't always hear them, especially if the bathroom door is closed after use.  

As for how to handle the tenant, I would not get yourself added to the utility, unless you can do so without admitting financial liability.  Rather, I'd be proactively involved with the tenant and a plumber to try to ID the problem.  If the house had an outdoor spigot and that spigot leaked after the tenant occupied, and it was not leaking before occupancy- technically it is your problem to fix the leak, but not your responsibility for the water bill.  That would be on the tenant to ensure the spigot was off after they last used it.  

But as you said, if your tenants are excellent tenants, I would do all I could within reason to help them resolve this.  It is up to you to decide what is 'within reason'.  

Thanks @Robin Simon  6 months is the timeframe I'm shooting for the purchase - and actually would prefer to close by the end of the year.  

I'm looking in my city for a property but am thinking I may need to look farther afield geographically, which is getting out of my comfort zone.  The couple I've seen so far - and this is just looking at Realtor.com or Zillow, are still obscenely overpriced.  But I realize I need to get out in the real world as many of the best deals are found through relationships, not by surfing the web.  

I'm grateful for BP so far as it has told me in black and white what I really already knew, but didn't consciously think of.  Mainly, have a plan and a team, and stop paralyzing myself by looking for the perfect deal on the internet.  

Just popping in to say Hi.  I've been interested in developing a portfolio to eventually include commercial.  I started with a flip last year that rewarded me handsomely.  This year I bought a rental house for my college-aged daughter and roommates which should cashflow  a couple hundred per month.  I'd love to get into a duplex-fourplex next, then onward and upward from there.  

Greetings from Fort Fun, IN.