All Forum Posts by: Harrison Liggett

@Nathan Gesner

Any properties of ours with 2+ units (depending on the type of bill and how many people are on the lease) need to be broken down when we receive the bulk utility charge. So I would say maybe 75ish properties have to get split? Multiply that number by how many different bills that we have to bill back and all of them are split differently. Garbage, for example, can just be split evenly whereas water will depend on number of inhabitants. 

That is what we've been doing up to this point (using a couple excel calculations) but this is wildly un-scalable. When 200 bills come through the door, manually calculating these out makes me feel like there's got to be someone out there smarter than me who's figured this out haha

Hey BP!

Out of all the headaches that come with property management, this is one at the top of the list. Most property management tools come with a RUBS calculator but the split NEVER accounts for tenant move in date. So, for example, we have 20 units and a quarterly bill comes in that we have to send but 2 of those tenants were not in for the full 3 months. This changes the ENTIRE calculation for every tenant (because we now have to pay for the portion when it was vacant) and ultimately the RUBS calculator provided is useless right?

How do you all account for pro-ration of utility bills when billing back to tenants?

Thank you so much, looking forward to your insight 

@Mo Farraj

Agreed with what some have said here. Whether or not it’s a deal depends on the buy price. Run your numbers diligently and offer what makes sense for you no matter what the list price is. Prepare to be rejected 90% of the time but that just means you’ve got to go offer on 10 listings to clip a good deal

@Trey Knight

Love this. I believe this was something That came up in a BP podcast not too long ago and also in a Tony Robbins book that helped a ton.

It’s the alleged warren buffet and the pilot story (I would look it up for complete details). Essentially, write down all of your current goals including ones you’ve “always wanted to do” such as lean a language or travel more etc. you then choose your Top 5 that are most important to you now (I promise social media isn’t on that list) and then literally stop trying to do all of the rest of those items. Stick to the core 5 and hit them with all you’ve got. And as you achieve those goals you can move on to the next couple.

It is an extreme mindset of not spreading yourself thin but I found it to be a great exercise. Good luck

@Cara Lonsdale

We use Tenant Turner for our rentals and they are fantastic. There is no charge to people viewing and you can just assign 1 day access codes for people to open up the lockbox and take a look.

Of course, you do run the (albeit low) possibility of someone making a key copy but you do have their government ID required to be on file and if you combine that with a home monitoring system you are golden.

The other service we tried for a while was “prempoint” which is a bit more complicated but slightly more secure. Careful in class C-ish neighborhoods though because there is a learning curve with the prospective viewer having to download an app.

Hey BP! Our property management company has always charged a full month rent as security deposit as well as a pro-rated first months rent payment upon move in. I've been thinking why we would do this as opposed to just charging the full two months up front. It covers us a little on the back end when people (inevitably) over stay their welcome a few days and that way it wouldn't be taken out of the security deposit.

They would be returned their fair portion (of the pro-ration) along with security deposit if they move out on time and as they should. If they NEED the pro-ration for move in, we probably don't want them as a tenant as it is right?

I’ve dealt with these in the past and they have mostly been case-by-case but wanted to know what you all might do.

We have a tenant who wants to leave (because of a new job out of town) a whole 9 months before his lease is up. It’s not worth the money trying to go to court and get all of that back but that was a hard place to lease and we even think the sec deposit will have to be used on cleaning and damages from them just being there those few months.

Do we talk big and ask for two months “or else”? (By the way, they won’t pay Feb rent because they will be out by this weekend but we all know how that goes)

@Michael Doherty

Definitely hire out. If your goal is to scale, you’re better off not starting this un-scalable habit.

@Account Closed

My only experience so far is giving them a call to confirm the functionality and pricing. (I got a representative on the first ring and she was very helpful).

From what I understand the idea is that you would need the what they call a 'gateway' (wifi modem looking thing) which is what talks to the cell towers. You would pay a low fee per month per gateway because it's using cellular. This gateway talks to the sensors in the house wirelessly and then you can see what those sensors are reading live from your phone or the web application from off site.

This would be something that, to my knowledge, you manage yourself to keep an eye on things. I was thinking we would use it for our vacancies while they are being worked on but I suppose you could have them in units that are occupied as well!

Again this is all just my understanding and I won't know the pros/cons until we roll out a couple to beta test.

Hope that helps! But also I do recommend just giving them a call and telling them what you need. They were super helpful.