All Forum Posts by: Hideyuki Gojima

@David Smith

here is some of property management companies' work.

Some owners negotiate and ask partial work and pay the less fee.

1. Work order management : When things are broken, your tenants contact the property manager and they will schedule the repair or any service to solve the problem.

3. Reporting / maintaining record : Property manager keeps the record of what happens at your property and report to you monthly usually.

4. Bookkeeping / Accounting : Some property managers do bookkeeping as well and send the financial information to your accountant at the end of year.

5. Leasing : When there is a vacancy, they contact real estate brokers and find the new tenant. They schedule cleaning before the new tenant moves in. 

Good luck!

@Matt Quock

I am not sure if there is significant tax benefit in your state but if there is not, I would rather form LLCs in my state because my accountant is more familiar with state law. Real estate is local business. Federal stuff, probably any decent CPA can do it but I have some bad experiences so I form llcs in my state now. It just makes me feel more comfortable for now..

@Noam Adler

When you open a property management company, you should make sure that your can manage the financial aspect of your business very well. Yes, of course you have to take care of the tenants well and have to go fix things here and there if necessary but the most important thing that owners care is obviously the money. If the tenants are paying on time, if you are paying vendors on time. 

There are many softwares out there nowadays but some property management softwares offer more than you need. I am not sure what type of properties you will manage but be careful with picking the right software for you.

You should choose the software that helps you manage finance aspect of your management first. 

Good luck on your business!

@Ryan Barr

As everybody says, of course you should talk to an attorney first about forming your LLC.

You can start using a property management software if it has a good accounting feature. Some of them do not have full accounting functionality so be careful with picking the right software.

If you are sole LLC, you can file Schedule E for your tax return which will make it easier to do your tax.

Good luck!!

@Olga Merino

It is exciting that you started helping your parents. 

To answer your question, yes it is always the best to have a separate bank account for each property. You can technically bookkeep it separately but it will be much easier to monitor and manage.

Most of the cases, one bank to receive rent and pay expenses for the property which means one financial state per property. In your case, there are 4 properties, so I recommend you have 4 separate bank accounts. You may also open savings for security deposits. 

You can assign expenses to each unit but that could be overkill because you do not have to unless one unit equals one property like a condo. 

Good luck!

@Ron Todd

It could be just a waiting game for you. The reason is very simple. Bank is also a business. They already lost the lending business on the mortgage and it has been years since it became REO.

The asset should be on their balance sheet explaining their auditors the asset is valued at this price because of the market in the area blah blah. If thats the case, it will not be easy for them to reduce the price more because of the internal reasons. BUT, it does not mean, they will hold it forever. If the asset stays unsold for too long, auditor will not allow that. They may actually force the local bank to recognize impairment on the asset. I am not sure if the situation is like I described above but I highly recommend you to keep telling them you are interested. If they can't find anyone for a while, they will come to you I think.

Good luck!

@Rodney Robinson

Awesome post! The first property will be always special for you. I am happy reading your post. 

Since it is only one property, i think excel sheet will be enough but if you buy a few more properties, you should use some kind of property management software as it covers almost every aspect of your property management work.

Here is the list of individual softwares that a lot of independent real estate owners use.

Document storage : Google drive, Dropbox, Box

Rent payment : Cozy, Zelle, Rentpaymen.com, Clickpay

Accounting : Quickbooks, Freshbooks, Xero 

@Richie Choy

As everybody is now aware that real estate industry is behind in terms of technology.  A lot of large real estate companies are forming investment funds to invest in startups.

To be honest, automation, AI and Blockchain, these things will grow more for sure but if you are thinking of building a some kind of software, you should really analyze why real estate industry has been not quick to follow the technology. A lot of real estate business is still built around "People". Zillow, Redfin, and Streeteasy came to the market and lots of people said brokers will lose their jobs. But obviously you still see so many brokers every where because the value that they are providing is not just letting the prospect tenants to see the apartment or house. There is more. Automating things is actually very easy compared to actually helping the users. 

There are so many layers and fragmented ares in real estate business, each profession has different problems. 

Talk to as many people as possible and see that they are doing and find out what will actually help them.

@Jonathan B.

I think its great that you try to manage your assets as detail as possible if you have time. I think you are doing great. 

A lot of real estate owners do whatever and later they have to do so many things at once.

Of course it is good enough to have one fixed asset and accumulated depreciation but it is always better to separately keep track of asset to monitor and analyze later. Some property management softwares allow that.

It may be a bothersome to keep entering depreciation expense but in quickbooks, you can set up a recurring depreciation expense so it should help you out.

@Cindy Craft

I have used Rentprep and Smartmove. They were good.

I am not sure if there is any difference among the products. Pricing is different tho.

This is a good list of tenant screening software.

Maybe you can check it out.

https://fitsmallbusiness.com/best-tenant-screening-services/

Some property management software has the feature too. Maybe you should check those out as well.

Good luck!