All Forum Posts by: Ethan Biederman

The first thing I'd do (if you haven't) is talk to him about it. Explain that you have holding costs and these delays are expensive to you. See what he says. He may stop doing it as a courtesy, or you may need to explain that it's a requirement to keep working together and he needs your work so he stops taking other work, or he may say that he can't afford to pass up the other work and you can negotiate a better pay scale or a bonus for timely completion. There are a bunch of solutions. One perk of working with a solo operator is that there ARE options. 

A downside you should consider is that this guy has no coverage if he gets hurt or sick, and that's a big risk to you both. It's ultimately why I stopped being a small-scale contractor.

I've found a couple very old posts on this but would appreciate feedback from any current Buildium users that use credit cards for expenses. Buildium help suggests setting up a bank account and running it with a negative balance.  This works for recording expenses but screws up my balance sheet reporting. My idea for an alternative is to use Bill Pay and just register the CC payment by transferring from the checking account and writing a "check" from the CC account for all the bills paid in that period.  

Before I get too far down the road with this, I'd appreciate any feedback on possible issues with Option 2 or alternative solutions. Thanks!

In my experience, the 1% guideline favors more expensive properties as maintenance and cap ex for a home can only go so low.  Labor rates are probably lower where you are but materials are pretty consistent across the country.  For example, a $500k 4br duplex in my area would require $5000 for a roof replacement while it might only be $4000 where you are, but my monthly rents would be $5000, while yours are $1000. Mowing might be $75 instead of $40 but that doesn't balance out a difference of $4k per month in gross rent.

TL:DR - The basic question is, "Is it still ok to discuss the deal with my neighbor even though he just signed with an agent?". I'm fine with using agents but this guy has mentioned "getting it on the market" at least 4-5 times in our first conversation. I absolutely do not care about commissions and am happy to have 2 realtors in the mix, I just don't want the deal to get difficult because of them.

This house was occupied by a guy who died a month ago, it was owned by his uncle but I'd been unable to reach him as he didn't have an address or contact number listed.  The owner(uncle) hasn't been to the house in 40 years.  It's literally starting to fall down and the nephew was a hoarder.  I want to do a flip, which I don't normally do, but I am a remodeling contractor and have experience with hoarding cleanups(not fun at all).  I can see it from my house so I'd like to do it well and help all our home values and make some dough rather than risk it turning into a really crappy flip by someone else.

I just wandered over to talk to the owner and the realtor showed up with all the paperwork to sign.  He didn't seem too happy to hear me talking about buying the property.  Any tips on the best way to proceed to make sure the deal goes through? Some of the recent listings in our neighborhood have been really high and the properties haven't sold, but this agent may have big eyes while I bet the owner just doesn't want to deal with it.  No way it's getting financed.

@Anthony Giuliani you might have more luck on the RI local forum on here.

@Steve Balinski We use the same colors on all apartments so we can easily touch up between tenants rather than do a full repaint if it's in good condition. Someareas like kitchens and hallways, doors, etc. need repainting more often than others.

All trim and any dingy looking walls get a good cleaning with Dirtex first. Anything that looks less than new after that gets repainted.