All Forum Posts by: Eugene Lavatman

Hello Christopher, its all about unit economics and margins. Need to identify apartments in high demand locations where on a per bedroom basis its below market pricing. The higher the bedroom count the lower the per bedroom price. In NYC a 3 bedroom could be $3300, a 4 bedroom $3650 and a 5 bedroom could be $4000. The 5 bedroom is $800 per room meanwhile 3 bedroom is $1100 per room. High demand for low priced rooms. 

Where do people find most off market development sites?

Look into Midwood and Sheepshead Bay neighborhoods in Brooklyn
- Horizontally: Avenue L to Emmons Ave
- Vertically: East 24th St to East 13th St
- Stick to under 13 minute walking distance to B / Q trains.
- You want to be close to Kings Highway, Emmons Ave or Sheepshead Bay Rd
- Russian and Jewish folks always interested in buying / renting good quality housing out there
- A lot of new construction on Ocean Ave driving prices up, even Avalon just built a 30 floor tower.

@Chad Hale its $2.99 per ACH now, but thats ok, glad I made this post.

Major disruptions coming our way! Rent payments via Stablecoin (maybe Diem.com?), real time payment transactions, no waiting 4 - 5 days for ACH to process, no 2.99% processing fee like credit cards. 

@Chad Hale thank you very much! https://www.gozego.com/ integration with Rentmanager allows for 24 hr settlement. The company essentially takes on the risk for not sufficient payments, they send you all the money before the money even settles in their account.

@Nicki Shelton do you happen to have the website for federal ACH?

@Joe Splitrock

Really interesting! Thank you for providing that information. As I delved deeper, found some more info... Besides ACH there are other payment methods. 

Venmo, PayPal, Zelle all use the RTP (real time payment) network to get instant payments settled. Check out this article: https://karenmpd.medium.com/fa... RTP will threaten VISA and MASTERCARD, since there will be less of a reason to charge 3% processing fees from SMBs.

Then there is also eChecks (two formats: RCC and Check21), funds CAN be made "available" same day in the receiving bank as long as the receiving end has good banking relationship + low disputes. But there is always the possibility of NSF (not sufficient funds) where the funds would be reversed.

A DREAM solution would be to use RTP such as a zelle/venmo but add a reconciliation tool similar to quickbooks that can sync to the bank using PLAID.com, analyze bank transactions and figure out who paid and who still didn't pay for that month and present it via cloud dashboard. Probably have to wait 5 more years for that.

@JD Martin
In coliving and corporate rental industry a lot of big players got caught with their pants down due to covid. Every dollar counts, it's the difference between having good units economics and failing unit economics. An extra 5% in rent price is the difference between a tenant saying your rental is out of their budget vs signing the lease. Saving 2% in processing and 3% elsewhere is what is required to survive and/or thrive, while competitors are shutting down or being bought out.

Other trends in 2021:

- Paying existing tenants to conduct showings before vacating, thus not needing to pay real estate brokers 

- No office, be completely remote, save $$$$$ by not having an office space

- Virtual team: pay $5 per hour to an expert European consultant instead of $20 to an entry level American.

- Your property photos = marketing content, professional photoshoot / videos / 3D walk-throughs = major change in demand generation

• @Joe Splitrock 

- There is definitely risk with Venmo P2P, might force us to switch to the business account.
- Zelle we do have a business account, its free to accept instant payments (they really are ahead of the curve), but unfortunately not the best for accounting purposes. There is NO risk of shutdown with Zelle.
- In regards to privacy I think we'll all be ok, Apple is taking away facebooks ability to acquire data from mobile devices. GDPR cracked down on all companies who operate in the EU. CCPA definitely making big changes for USA privacy. There is more and more privacy every year, If you compare America 2016 and 2021 its a very different world when it comes to privacy standards.
- The lack of same day ACH and RTP by "MOST" management companies just means one of these days a company will come in and disrupt the market and everything will be flipped upside down.
- The reason why most platforms do offer same day ACH for accepting tenant payment is because real estate payments are considered high risk transactions, due to possibility of NTF (Not sufficient funds). It's also another reason why PayPal does not allow you to dispute payments related to real estate.