All Forum Posts by: Jill F.

I read somewhere you weren't supposed to use bleach on black mold that vinegar worked better.

We inherited one long-term tenant that regularly paid late to the former landlord. 

We do all communications regarding late rent in writing. I do want to be flexible so I wrote an official late policy that defines habitual lateness and the penalties. In November, I told her if she was current and on time with December's rent we'd start fresh at the beginning of this year. 

If the tenant can learn to pay on time, I'll be happy for her to stay.

Rae, welcome and good luck.

On our first investment property, we bought two 4-plexes with a residential loan rather than a commercial loan. For this loan, the bank did not count any potential rent towards our income. We had to show that we made enough money to make the payments out of other income.

We are in the process of getting a commercial loan now for 13 units. The bank will count rent on this loan but the terms are less favorable. For this loan, our bank looked at our total financial situation rather than just income and they require 25% down and a debt ratio (dscr) of at least 1.25% on any deal they will consider.

On our first deal two tenants gave notice before we closed so we started out with three vacancies instead of the one we expected. Because these are primarily college housing units and the school semester had already started we decided to focus on renovations that would allow us to raise the rent. It took us four months to get renovated and back to fully rented. Then the day we finally got fully rented we got notice from another tenant. I wouldn't feel comfortable doing a deal where I couldn't make payments for six months with no rent.

Thank you!

The national apartment association does an annual survey of operating income and expenses gathering data from it's members (large multi-family property managers). 2012 is the latest publicly available data. In this survey, operating expenses were running 42%-57% with subsidized complexes at the higher end.

https://www.naahq.org/sites/default/files/naa-docu...

Hi Jason,

Like the others, I would paint the trim white but on the cabinets, I would use a product called Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations. The large kit is 79.00 you might need 2 kits for those cabinets. Here are some I recently redid in some $420/month student rentals. These were really old crufty, cabinets. I wish I had been clever enough to take a before picture but I wasn't.  It takes about 1.5 hours every day for 5 days to do the process but no sanding is required and it's pretty dummy proof. The urethane finish coat is nicer than paint. The cabinets below took 1/2 a kit but I only did the base coat on the inside of the doors. -J

Hi Kenson,

Buildium was the only (reasonably priced) property management software that offered (almost) full access to the general ledger.

We use the $45/month version of Buildium.

• We selected Buildium because it was the only product that offered the accounting functionality my husband wanted.
• We and our tenants love the epay (for .50) 
• The basic tenant screening for $15 has been very useful. So far, so good.

I pay $125/room with my paint for walls. If they are doing 4-5 rooms they'll usually throw in a ceiling or two and maybe trim in one room. Most recently, I paid $625 for a 650 sq ft apartment this included walls in living/dining/kitchen/hall/bath/bedroom, ceiling in living room, and trim in kitchen.  Reasonable painters almost never wash the walls first. I've found it's cheaper to hire a cleaner to wash greasy walls or dusty walls and for everything else there's primer. I could probably get it done even cheaper but real painters don't splatter and make a mess so it's worth it to me not to have to worry about my flooring and wood trim. I remove all hardware before hand (towel racks, doorknob plates, mirror hinges, etc) whatever I don't want painted around. They remove switchplates and outlet covers. I got a bunch of quotes before I found these guys back when I had my house painted.

Akron, Ohio here. We recently purchased our first rentals, 2 side by side 4 units for 67,200 each; We had a total purchase price of $134,400 for 8 units plus we made about $8000 in repairs and upgades for a total of $142400. Total rent is $3375/month. 2.37%. I haven't been able to find anything else that will touch that.