All Forum Posts by: James Mcsweeney

Any landlord or PM needs to have clear rental application and screening criteria. It must be uniformly applied to the properties you manage. When you involve clients, the problem is that they will not be consistent - one client will be ok with a lower credit score, for example, than another. Furthermore, the same client may be inconsistent with respect to their own property if they get multiple unqualified applicants... for example, they may reject anyone with a credit score less than 620, but after 3 rejections, the 4th applicant has a score of 605 and they decide to accept. There is far too much potential for Fair Housing violations and claims (even if there is no outright violation, you don't want a claim).

Last year we put in 6-8 offers, full price, most of them all cash and didn't get anything until our realtor got us an off-market deal. In fact one of the properties we were looking at ended up with 35 offers on it.

I think the thing is to just be patient. Don't chase, there are some crazy offers out there, and even if you get the house under contract, it has to appraise. Very very often many of these properties wont appraise for the agreed upon price, so the financing falls apart.

I think that I really depends on your personal bandwidth. Many investors view the bookkeeping as a tedious extra task that gets in the way of them analyzing new deals or managing their current ones which certainly can be the case.

Many CPAs offer bookkeeping that isn’t overly expensive (maybe a couple hundred a month) in addition to tax services and it pays to have them under one roof. You would save some time and money if your CPA was the one entering the books and then doing your taxes since they would be knowledgeable of what was happening throughout the year.

We just purchased a duplex and need to replace the floor in one of the units. I've lived in several different rental units with a variety of different floors. My favorite had been the apartment with polished concrete floors. I initially thought I would hate it, but I ended up absolutely loving it. Although I loved them I know that might not be the overall response.

Anyone have experience with concrete floors?

I don't see why you couldn't make this work. You need prime property to command prime rents. Around me, lakefront spots are $50+ per night not sure what is included. However this is a business more than it is a RE investment. You'll need several staff for admin, cleaning and maintenance.

Hi, one of my rental house was one of the many significantly impacted by the winter storms in Texas and sustained heavy damage, most of which won't be covered by insurance. I'm facing a significant loss.

I've looked everywhere on FEMA's website and it doesn't seem that there is much assistance available to rental property owners that suffered a loss in a presidential declared disaster; outside of a SBL loan. My margins are tight as it is and I don't know how I will be able to repay the loan. Are there no grants available to landlords that own single family houses? It seems, from what I've read, grants are only available if you live in the impacted property.

Thanks!

This is for a property in Kansas City. A 1500 sqft house. Tenant did treat it poorly, but wondering if these expenses are reasonble?

If you've been doing this right, you should have been putting aside 10% of your monthly rent for maintenance and another 10% for capital expenditures and hopefully another 5-10% for vacancy... That money isn't really yours - it's for maintaining your property. Use it to pay for preparing your property for the next tenants. In the end - all of these repairs are going to cost way less than going to court.

Do it. Not expensive, last pretty well, and definitely make people happy.

As the title says, I have an out of state property I am thinking about listing with my property manager. They say they have a list of buyers and would like to represent me. Their fee is 4% commission. The property is in great condition and a prime investment for investors especially given the competition. Just wanted to get people quick opinion, is 4% reasonable to you? I know for certain that I am handing them a a great property on silver platter. I also thought about finding my own buyer. What would you do?