All Forum Posts by: Ian S.

Hi all,

We recently acquired a SFH in North Carolina and shortly after purchase got a violation letter from the city stating there are paint cans that need to be cleaned up at the back of the property. Some of the paint cans are unlabelled and thus must be considered toxic. Some of them are in the neighbor's side of the property line, but that house is also vacant and we can't get through to the owner to share costs.

The property manager we are working with got a ridiculous quote of $8000 to hire a company to do the clean-up (that’s approx. 10% of the purchase price of the property!!) - plus more if "wetland testing" is required (apparently the back of the lot borders a tiny strip labelled wetland on the GIS map) . This all seems outrageous to us.  Our PM is getting a second quote.

Has anyone ever run into this before and can provide any advice on the best way to proceed?

Thank you very much for your help!

For anyone else reading this thread, I ended up contacting a home inspector I've worked with in the past and he has agreed to do a "light" home inspection for $100, so that works out perfect. 

Thanks - I have the same question.  However I was looking for someone who would do more than just a visual inspection of the outside of the property - I was looking for someone to go inside (I can provide a one-time door code) and do detailed photos of  potential problem areas etc.  I'm not sure I would feel comfortable just hiring someone randomly off Craigslist.

Are there any alternatives to WeGoLook? Disappointing that they got out of this business. :(

Thanks!

Wondering if anyone in Charlotte area has experience with Waynco Roofing (Matthews). Considering them for a SFH re-roofing job.

Thanks

Hi Chad,

Yes we get an "owner packet" which is a pdf with multiple owner statements, 1 page per property.  

That is an excellent idea to ask for an XLS/CSV export.  However, once we get the XLS/CSV we still need to put it somewhere - do we DIY it via Excel/Google spreadsheets or do we try to import it to QB Online as "banking transactions"? Wouldn't we then have another step to associate these transactions to the right property?  

Thanks

Hi Chad,

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, PMs are providing monthly and year end reporting of expenses/income tracking. 

We want to track expenses on a per property basis as well as overall. (how much did we spent on maintenance this year, how much on cap ex, etc - to help us identify strong performing and weak properties)

Any advice appreciated.

Hi. We own 11 SFH rentals, spread among 3 property managers (different states). All 3 PMs use Appfolio and pay us monthly. Any expenses go against reserves of $500 per property and if any expenses are higher than that, we make an owner payment through the portal. While most of our expenses for each property go through the various Appfolios, some are done directly from our credit card.

All this has become a bit of an accounting nightmare. Until now we've been using a pretty unwieldy home-baked Google Sheet to track our expenses, but are looking for a more elegant solution.

Our wish list:

1. Must be cloud based - we don't always have the same laptop with us so we need a 100% web based solution.
2. Must be mobile friendly - We want to be able to upload receipts on-the-go and categorize them. We want to be able to pull out our phone and see how a particular property is doing.
3. Must be affordable. We’re really struggling with sticker shock at QB Online $35 a month, Xero $30 a month and Rentec Direct $45 a month (!)
4. Must be easy-to-use. QB Online doesn't seem to support rentals "out of the box". Some people set up buildings as Customers, and units as Jobs (or maybe Tenants?), while some set it up with buildings being Categories - (!) and if we choose the wrong model, we’re stuck forever? We can’t even change the term “Customers” to “Buildings” so we’re concerned about how any produced reports would look.
5. We don't need it to be able to send out and pay bills, or track rents (apart from rental income) - we have PMs/Appfolios for that.
6. We don’t want to rely on downloading transactions from an online bank - since most of our online activity is tracked through the 3 appfolio's we’ll have to manually enter it all. (That's ok!)

Any suggestions?

By the way, are there are BP Webinars on Accounting? We couldn't see any, but that’d be helpful :)  

Thanks!

Thanks for the comment! As soon as we form an LLC (whether it be in state or out of state) it triggers the California LLC Franchise tax of $800 a year. There are many threads on biggerpockets about it. The state has beautiful weather but it's not the most friendly climate for real estate investment!! From another thread:

Any comments? Thanks!

Hi, since I live in California, an LLC is not a viable option for me for my out of state rentals (9 of them, mostly B/C). They are all managed by a property manager. It bothers me however that for my tenants it is so easy to find out who I am and where I live with one simple click on a real estate listing to get the property tax records. I was considering setting up a virtual mailbox (travelingmailbox.com maybe) to at least hide where I live, even though my name would be there. I realize that it would be far from bulletproof, but is it worth $15 a month just to make it a little more difficult to find out who I am (how much my own home is worth, etc.) and dissuade frivolous lawsuits (or creepy tenants).

Thanks!