All Forum Posts by: Jeff Anderson

@Account Closed Thanks!

@Nathan Frost At the moment, I have 4 rentals. So, the following comes from the perspective of a small-portfolio landlord who is a DIYer who lives close to his units and doesn't want to pay for a Registered Agent and PO BOX. ***NOTE: I would not recommend this if you have a large portfolio, do not live within proximity of your rentals, drive an expensive car, or doesn't want to actively manage properties.

The main idea here is to not list your personal addresses on public documents (i.e. LLC & AR filling & property tax notices) while fulfilling the requirement of having a physical and mailing address

For my LLC, I have both the Physical and Mailing addresses going to one of my rental units. This works out fine for me as I live close by, have a have face-to-face relationship with my tenants and hardly ever receive mail for my LLC. The bonus here is you can write off the milage (if you deduct by the mileage method) for your travel to pick up your mail.

@Colleen F. Interesting. I was able to request Internet service to my building with no issues. I literally told them (Sparklight) the service was for the building and had no difficulties obtaining this.

I can see the day when there will no longer be USPS; by their own inflexibility to serve others and move toward the changing postal needs and desires of people, they have set in motion their obsolescence. If they keep it up, there will be a day soon when we will be talking about USPS as we today look back on the dial-up modem and the film camera.

@Nathan Gesner - Yeah, and imagine if USPS used that same argument for email addresses when that came out? That argument doesn't fly in the age of mobility and movement.

I'm thankful that USPS never was able to get their hands on sending/receiving emails (remember?) in the early days of the Internet.

Oh, $20/mo isn't a big deal. I just don't want that money going into a monopoly that provides marginal service.

@Melanie P. you have some interesting suggestions and I'll give them a shot. I'll report back with what happens! Thanks.

Hi @Melanie P. I already checked with the Postmaster. The addressing system only has units 'A', 'B', 'C', and 'D' in their database. If the address doesn't fully match, it gets kicked back to Sender as "Unknown".

According to USPS, my only recourse is having the City add a new address entry for only the street address (no apartment unit) in the system. They will only do this if I add a 5th unit (which takes me into commercial territory). So, yeah, government bureaucracy at its finest.

@Alecia Loveless I tried, however, the Postmaster basically said--'If I make an exception with you then that will open the floodgates for doing the same for other future requests.' 

As PO BOX rates have more than doubled in the last 10 years, I'm trying to setup an additional mailbox for my fourplex building for the purpose of receiving administrative mail to effectively use it like a PO BOX. The building has the following addressing scheme for the units: '123 Main St. Apt. A' (B, C, and D as well). And, just to be clear, I'm not trying to setup an additional unit--I am just trying to accomplish receiving mail to '123 Main St.', nothing more.

Has anyone successfully accomplished this?

To go on further,

As a test, I hung a mailbox (along side with my tenant's mailboxes), clearly labeled it with the building address, and sent a test letter. The letter came back "Return to Sender Attempted - Not Known". When I went to the local USPS office to inquire with the Supervisor, his explanation was: the Address Management System only shows the four units (i.e. 123 Main St. Apt. A) not the physical building, 123 Main St., and is thus undeliverable. He directed me to the City to have the building address added to receive mail and for this I would have to apply with the City for having an additional unit constructed (i.e. applications, permits, etc.) as mail can only be delivered to a dwelling (rather than a building). I'm not sure how he he concluded this as county records show  '123 Main St.' as a valid physical address.

When I spoke with the City Community Dev. Supervisor to explain what I was trying to accomplish, they said that shouldn't be a problem as I am not adding a unit and the building is a physical address. However, before adding the address to the system, they checked with USPS to verify, and came back denying my request saying the same explanation as what USPS said above.

No one at USPS or the City has been able to provide me with any ordinances, laws, USPS Handbook rules, etc. as their basis for enforcing this decision. Perhaps there is one, but until that can be provided as justification for their decision it doesn't seem proper for USPS to be playing 'detective' telling people they can't hang a mailbox when there is a physical address on record with the county.

Has anyone run into this too?

Thanks in advance for your comments and responses.