All Forum Posts by: Krishna Chava

second to cozy though I moved everything to buildium after 20+ units.

I advice NOT to buy SFH that rents close to 2000 for first investment property. You have fewer eligible renters at that price compared to sub 1200 rental. if you look hard, you should be able to find duplexes for 200k close to Arlington in cities like Forest Hill, Burleson and South Fortworth. You will make 1000 on each side which is still 2000, but you have clear upside to go up to 1400 in 2-3 years. It's unlikely you can rent your SFH for 2800 2-3 years from now.

cities south of I20 are good for investment now. CererHill is my favorite though most of my investments are over to Fort Worth.

I require tenants to have 3x monthly rent as income, ask them for a copy of their paychecks and call their employer to be sure. I am flexible with all other criteria especially credit score. Rented to tenants with eviction records (after deliberation), rented to tenants who gave me only half-the deposit, basically broke all the "rules" except the rule of making sure they have well paying job. So far, worked out great. 

I invest in any property that rents at 1000 per month, cash flows and I can self manage. These are still available( if you ignore age of property etc.,) and my money is better invested here than stock market or anywhere else I can think of.

Hi Steven, You can still find reasonably priced new construction that cash flows South of I20 in Fortworth. These are typically small builders that buy a lot for cheap, build a new SFH or duplex and want to sell it quick.

My operating expenses here in Texas have gone up a lot due to properly tax increases( runaway appraisals). I would any day take a bit higher mortage rate than higher property tax. If it's a loan I can payoff and be done eventually.

Hi Sam,

Agree refining existing camera system would be best if one exist for the property and extensive monitoring. However, we want to keep out of uploading videos to cloud for privacy reasons and we also don't want property management company paying for broadband connection to uload these videos. Locally stored and anylzed video is of 4k quality and has lot more information than a grainy upload.

In the case these is no existing camera monitoring for individual units ( most apartment complexes), our system builds the solution from scratch.

Krishna.

Hi @aaron Klatt, Thanks for your reply and bringing up some relavent questions.

Our system collects anonymous intelligence with edge computing as oppoesed to a regular security systems that uploads video stream to cloud. Tenant has access to video and can upload to cloud, though an app, but landlord can't access that. 

Prowling and loitering is when you detect someone across multiple unit camera several times in a short span. If someone is trying to access a single unit, it's a guest, until that person attempts to break or kick the door.

As for the expense, most of my tenants would pay extra for a security system. Most of the times tenants are the people who are annoyed by 10 people living in 2 bed unit, someone running a business and taking up parking, annoying partying etc., As a property manager those are soft issues to me compared to say, eviction. However those are the type of things that make a apartment complex better and attract higher paying tenants as we rent up.

Krishna.

I want to thank the collective wisdom of bigger pockets community that enabled me to grow from 13 doors to 75 doors in 2 years while also holding a full time job in technology (I own and self manage these properties with a 50% partner).

I am currently working with a Silicon Valley startup to customize Artificial intelligence based systems to help property managers and tenants with security and other maintenance issues. Following are the issues where AI can help my job as a property manager. I appreciate any feedback you might have. I have also posted in marketplace forum with link to slidedeck and a survey. PM me if interested.

1) Impose rental occupancy limits: Notify if unit is sub-leased, has more occupants than on the lease, running a business or having regular parties in quiet hours.

2) Detect any loitering and prowling. Notify when police show up, when common area sprinkler goes off etc.,

3) Provide tenant with video feed of camera at his front door and send alerts if strangers show up or if there is any security issue like attempted breakin. This functionality is app based and is available remotely to the tenant.

Krishna.