All Forum Posts by: Harriet Baldwin

 In our experience, for lower-income area properties, tenants have a very hard time coming up with 3 months prior to move in.  Would you consider 2 months payment prior to move in instead?  Also, if the going rate is $600 (did I read that right?) and you have a parking issue, I personally would consider asking $575 and getting quality tenants vs. asking $700 and getting questionable tenants.

For otherwise qualified tenants (good references, clean record, sufficient income but no savings), we sometimes take a minor initial security deposit and allow them to pay extra $ to build up the deposit (ideally within 6 months).  Yes, this can be risky (I wouldn't do it on a rental if I only had a couple and we have evicted one tenant this year who failed under such an agreement).  But if the tenant is screened sufficiently it can work and imo is a LOT better than extended vacancy OR bad tenants with enough deposit $ .

[aside - words do matter, in many jurisdictions deposits are refundable and fees aren't, so "lost the deposit" is technically illegal in some areas...hopefully wasn't in this case!  Not a lawyer, so no legal advice offered but a little paranoia caution can be a good thing]

@Meg K. If you want to work with a real estate agent to help rent this property, I would suggest approaching a rental specialist who is already active in the market.  Sounds like your initial person wasn't quite ready for action :)

If you don't know a rental specialist, easy to figure out by going on realtor.com and looking at rental listings - likely there are a few names that pop up over and over.

@Meg K. did the realtor have clients that would pay $1,000?  If so, it might be worth paying the realtor.  We had a situation (c2010) in a C/D neighborhood of Bridgeport CT with a property we had rehabbed to B quality, and 2 of the 3 open units (of 4 total) were placed through realtors.  We were happy to pay the fees (2 months, if IIRC) - at least in that situation, the tenants using realtors were better qualified than those without.

@Margaret Martindale are the shelves gouged, or just dirty?  The peel-and-stick tiles are good for covering gouges without tearing under normal use (shelf contact paper would likely tear).

What category of SFH?

If A, it might be worth it to spend the time to make the cabinets quite nice.  

B, a good cleaning on all surfaces and paint on the front edge of the shelf and inside of cabinet door should do it (take the doors off to paint, and consider updating the hardware). 

C/D, good scrubbing should do it (and paint the outsides of the cabinets if damaged).  You can paint the front edge of the shelf if it bugs you, but in a C/D property that's more about your own design wishes than it is about tenant demand, imo.

FYI, at least in NY state, Chase no longer allows non-account holders to deposit cash.  

As of now (Oct 2015), tenants can deposit checks or money orders (but not cash) into our Chase account to pay rent.  Some branches initially said 'no third party deposits', but that was a training issue, not actual policy.  We just double checked on money orders this week, as one tenant's branch told them "no third party money order deposits" but that was incorrect...

18% here - I'm thinking that's likely to be on the high end of most ranges.  This topic is front of mind, since we just paid 1st half school taxes today (all but 5 of our properties have school taxes due Oct & Mar).

We are in a low cost and high tax area (Southern Tier NY). So tax as % of gross rent should be relatively high vs. other regions. However, functionally those high taxes are passed on to renters -- rent as a % of property value is relatively high, even though absolute rents are not expensive.

All property taxes in our area include 4 categories: county/town, city/village (only if property is in an incorporated area), school, and sewer.  Water bills can lien the property but aren't technically taxes, so not included.  Property taxes total 17.9% of gross rents for the easy-to-calculate subset (38 deeds, 71 doors total).  For in-city properties (all but 7 deeds), this includes trash pick up.

When we were in CT, the mil rates varied drastically from town to town (or city).  However, I noticed that out of pocket taxes paid tended to be similar on a per-door basis.  That is, a median $450,000 home in a "nice" town might pay about $4,000/year in taxes, and a median $120,000 home in a "low income" city might pay about $4,000/year in taxes.

@Jim Workman it's not just you.  Last year we took a lot of time to look at PM software.

We have 55 doors as of Oct 1 (Nov 1 will be closer to 61) and self PM (all properties are local). We found that full accounting programs with PM add-ons (Yardi, QuickBooks) still didn't have full PM functionality. And PM programs had at best accounting lite (most lacked a good way to track capital expenses and/or mortgage payments, none had a good way to account for general overhead).

We used Yardi when we were 100+doors (and in a different market). We use QB now (QB Pro, desktop, multi-user is what works for us & our accountant). If you are using QB, I have found the user forums to be a huge help.

If anyone finds a silver bullet for integrated accounting & operational PM software, let us all know! 

@Linval T. thanks, and puns are a-OK by me!  I used to know a Linval when we were in CT.

Hello all!

Have been lurking for a month or so, and find the forums a bit...addictive!  Great sharing of accumulated wisdom and actionable ideas.  Finally created an account when I had a comment for a thread that seemed obvious to me but hadn't been mentioned yet...

We (my husband & I) have been in Elmira for four years and are full time real estate investors.  I've been in real estate full time for 10 years with a variety of experience (development, renovations, property management, and some time-not current- as a Realtor listing and selling properties). Prior to that I was an equity analyst on Wall Street for 15 years.  We really love the Finger Lakes.  Yesterday we had nothing hard scheduled after 1pm so we headed up to Seneca Lake and enjoyed some wine tasting :)

My spouse has 30-plus years experience in real estate and is a Realtor (broker) and former developer, mortgage broker and mortgage lender.

We are currently focused on creating home ownership opportunities in Elmira NY.  Real estate is our business and our mission. Our goal is to increase housing security and improve neighborhood quality by giving folks paths to home ownership - paths that require hard work, with all the rewards that brings.

Near term goals include creating a web presence (nope, no current website! crazy, right?) and using texts more intensely for both current clients and prospective clients.  Oh, and I owe the spouse a whiteboard for the office!

How about path of least resistance - move into the second floor? No upfront hassle! 

Depending on your (and the first floor tenants') timeline, you could end up on the first floor eventually anyway...

Second @Rob Beland, get estoppels from the existing tenants.

Aside - long time lurker, this thread made me register :)