All Forum Posts by: Emily N.

@Greg Scott this is extremely helpful information. Thank you.

Hi All!

As the title states, we manage an apartment complex with a strict no pets policy and were forced to accept a resident's dog when they submitted an ESA letter. Yesterday we received notice that the ESA (a pitbull) attacked the next door resident's kid and scratched her on the arm as well as growled in her face.

We've instructed the resident to file a police report and they also submitted photos to us of the scratches as well as a recounting of what happened. This property is in New Jersey where most judges side against landlords in court so we are hesitant to file for eviction for fear that they'll come down on us about it being an ESA.

Has anybody else navigated this sort of thing before? Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,

E

Thank you for your replies. Yes, it's a brutally competitive market right now, and very hard to stick out of the crowd even when offering asking price.

@Dylan Vargas thanks for the tip on why the seller wouldn't be comfortable with us getting financing.

@Andrew Hogan great reminder about retrading...we're going to have to throw our hat over the fence and hope we can make it to the other side

I'm making an offer on a 60-unit deal in Indianapolis this week. The broker has told me there are many bigger players interested in the deal because of a lack of inventory in Indy. The seller has said he is not 'excited' about traditional financing and wants this to be an all cash deal. I/my team have enough liquidity for a downpayment and financing...

Does anybody have any tips on how to get our LOI + Offer to stand out? I'm confident that we can close as we have great lender relationships, and they know we are conservative, low-leverage investors.

Does anybody have any tips on remote onboarding during Covid-19?

We are owner-operators and we need to fire one of our property managers. The problem is the property is located in the Midwest and we are on the East Coast. In normal times we would go out there ourselves and take over until we find a proper replacement. Currently, we don't feel comfortable with the amount of exposure that would entail. 

Has anybody been able to successfully hire and onboard a new employee remotely? Any suggestions are welcome and would be very helpful.

Thanks!

@Karl Hadley After reading through the responses everyone has had, we are taking a closer look at our PM and starting to apply serious pressure. I have had the property shopped, and the report they gave us was great, but our leasing agent was the one they interacted with, not our manager. If the PM doesn't show they can turn things around asap, we are going to change things up.

@Jill F. These are incredible suggestions - thank you. No wonder you have success working with lower-income residents. I will absolutely be using all of your suggestions.

Another great suggestion is renovating to the top of the neighborhood. We will have to play around and find the sweet spot on what level of reno works or if any does at all. I don't doubt you'll be at the 150-unit market with your approach to working with residents - though as you can see from our situation, it's not always as glamorous as many make it out to be!

@Joe Splitrock That's a great point. I hadn't thought about offering split-payments. And also an interesting point about higher credit scores sometimes correlating to lower rents as those tenants have more options. I will speak to our manager about your suggestions.

Thank you all for your replies. You've all given some great eye-opening advice that makes me feel like we might have some options. 

@Jay Hinrichs We have found ourselves in almost the exact same position as your friend. In the past, the higher-cap places in the midwest were easier to come by and easier to turn around. This time it is proving a challenge, especially with the tenant base in OKC that we weren't familiar with. 

@Britta Hild, @Joe G. I have been thinking your comments non-stop. Britta, I think you're right that change begets change. And Joe, I agree we need to take a closer look at our property manager. We are out on-site 2-3x/month for a few days at a time, but we've had the same PM from the start...and have also had the same results from the start. If we don't shake it up, how can we expect different results?

@Victor S. I agree that $25k/roof is outrageous! Unfortunately we've had 6-8 bids from different roofing companies and that's about the price they come in at. Can you recommend anybody else?

@Jessica Jay-Maleski @John Nachtigall You both open an interesting door with the suggestion of Section 8. We have had bad experience with these residents in the past, but perhaps at this particular property it will be a viable solution if all else fails.

@Kevin Sobilo I really like this idea. Ideally we would take this route moving forward - of course if the market allows.

@Jill F. We do have a late policy that we repeatedly let our residents know about. The issue is that by the 25th of the month, only about 55%-60% of the residents have paid their rent. They all bring in 'PTP's' (promise to pays). Given that we don't want to evict half of our residents at once, our PM tries to work with them. Do you think the solution would be to draw a hard line instead?

@Ian Walsh At this point if we sold we would lose all the $ we've put into the roofs and renovations + pre-payment penalties on our loan. We are in it!

Based on everybody's comments, our team has come up with a plan of action. We are going to explore different PM options as well as renovating a gutted unit to luxury standards and see if there is a market for it. There are good residents in the OKC market, they just don't know about us...yet! We are learning our lesson the hard way about the draw of more units at a higher cap in a rougher area. 

For those of you asking about experience - I work for a company with 40+ years experience in property ownership/management. In the 70's when the company was started, multi-family didn't have anywhere near the interest or $ in it that it does today. It wasn't unusual to find great deals on beautiful properties with 200+ units. Or so I'm told! As you all know, that is no longer a reality in today's market.

Thank you again for all your suggestions. Feel free to keep them coming. Your comments have spurred us into action, and have let us see options and problems that we were not seeing. BP is the best!

@Vinay You're absolutely right. We can dump infinite $ into the roofs, but it doesn't justify rent increases. If someone were to try to tell me I was paying a higher rent than my neighbors because there was a new roof but the apartment is just the same as the competitors...you can bet I'd run!

I think you have a good point though around the credit score increase. As you know, it's a catch-22 - we get more traffic when we relax our application standards and are able to fill apartments faster, but in the end it may not be worth it.

Let that other person know that if they only have $5k in savings, they should do their due diligence and then some!