All Forum Posts by: Johann Jells

Quote from @Pat Aboukhaled:

Curious.. do you think a flat rate for the whole season feels more convenient, or would you rather pay per snowfall to avoid paying for a mild winter?

My worry about per snowfall or per hr is dependability. I guess a flat seasonal fee like any insurance policy, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But given I've paid for snow removal like once ever, I don't know what I should offer someone who is not a "pro" and already has an idea of their rate. 

I'm also intrigued by the Shovler.com app, but I fear being left hanging in the event of a big snowfall. And in those events prices can rise dramatically!

Funny story: my son the rock climber was in the Seattle area a few years ago when they had a massive snow storm with more on the way. People were panicking about their roofs collapsing and willing to pay almost anything to get someone up there to shovel them off. Since my son knew how to do it safely with ropes and harnesses he made like $3,000 in 2 days!

I have a city rowhouse with a 20' sidewalk and 5' wide steps with 9 treads and two 7'x7' landings. It's a 4 family, I just don't want that kind of transactional relationship with any tenants. At another property with just the sidewalk I let the tenants take care of it, but the liability of these steep stairs makes it too important for it to be haphazard or me having to scold them to shovel and salt the walk and steps.

I know in snowy areas people with houses contract plowing for the winter at a flat rate. Is that customary for sidewalks, or do I pay by the hour per storm? We don't get a lot of snow in NJ these days, we've gone seasons recently where I never broke out my snowblower for where I live!

Anyway, any pointers from northern people with urban multifamily properties would be appreciated. I'm going to try and see if any of the long term neighbors want to do it, lots of pre-gentrification folks still here who might be happy to.

Quote from @Chris Perrotta:

Good morning,

I would like to talk to you about a solution my startup is creating that helps solve this issue. Feel free to message me directly and would love to setup a quick call about this.

Chris

 Sorry, but I'm not going to put $30k of tenants money into a startup that is not a federally insured financial institution.

I guess I get it, most people here are using real names and NJ managers don't want to admit they don't comply with the escrow law.

Really? No larger NJ landlords or managers here?

NJ requires an interest bearing account. My commercial bank just quoted me $1400 per year to have online service to do this for my 12 units!!! How do other midsize landlords with escrow requirements handle this? The branch employees are poorly trained to handle this, every time I opened a new tenant's account it was a nightmare, they got it wrong in different ways ALL THE TIME!

NJ Law:
The person receiving money so deposited or advanced shall:
a. (1) Invest that money in shares of an insured money market fund established by an
investment company based in this State and registered under the "Investment Company Act of
1940," 54 Stat. 789 (15 U.S.C. § 80a-1 et seq.) whose shares are registered under the "Securities
Act of 1933," 48 Stat. 74 (15 U.S.C. § 77a. et seq.) and the only investments of which fund are
instruments maturing in one year or less, or (2) deposit that money in a State or federally
chartered bank, savings bank or savings and loan association in this State insured by an agency
of the federal government in an account bearing a variable rate of interest, which shall be
established at least quarterly, which is similar to the average rate of interest on active interest bearing money market transaction accounts paid by the bank or association, or equal to similar accounts of an investment company described in paragraph (1) of this subsection.

I have several mineral core wood veneer apartment doors that have failed after >25 years, like exploded, delaminated, whatever. I just got 2 prices on doors.  One from a lumber yard for just the door, pre-mortised for hinges and drilled for locks as mandatory for sale: $1300 each. The other installed by a door company: $2200 each! Does this sound reasonable?  It all sounds nuts to me. 

Unfortunately the construction of the doorframes makes using a steel door and frame a huge project of ripping out 120 year old trimwork that will never be the same again, so I'm stuck getting the mineral core doors.  

Zillow & Apts.com here. This fall is 1st time I've gotten significant leads from the latter. I used to use only CL starting around 2000, and actually the quality of leads was much higher! The ease of just tapping a button to inquire compared to writing a little email apparently makes all the difference in the world. The vast majority of Zillow leads never respond back to me, even some who send applications!

Some people click on so many units that when they get called they have no idea of the apt I'm talking about and want me to basically read them the entire ad over the phone. Umm, no. 

BTW @Katie Miller, Zillow, Trulia & hotpads are the same company with 3 websites all sharing the same listings. 

I don't understand why both Zillow and Apts.com sites are so damn clunky for managing a rental ad. I have dozens of 'dead' responses from several turnovers for just the ONE UNIT I have currently listed! The only option I find on Zillow is to manually 'archive' each one, there's no "select all", not to mention actually just deleting rather than archiving them. Am I missing something? I've crawled all over that site.

Quote from @Jon A.:

In practice, it means the difference between not being able to rid yourself of a tenant you might prefer to be gone in NJ, vs not being able to remove a nonpaying tenant in NY. I'll take the former if I have a choice. You can still raise the rent at renewal, to the point a judge might say its "unconscionable" if he's asked. 

That point apparently depends on a number of factors, not just %. I've never had to go there, fortunately. The nastier of my 2 eviction I got super lucky because of another NJ law, if a tenant gives notice but overstays, you can DOUBLE the rent! Checkmate in that case, they were gone, no backsies. One of my best days.