All Forum Posts by: Kristin Boekhoff

I am putting a laundry room (coin-operated) and storage units in the basement of my small multifamily. The basement is too low to be rentable SF (unfortunately!), but this allows me to get a bit extra out of it...

Jae,

Diana Khan is a well-known real estate attorney in Baltimore City. She doesn't "specialize" in this per se, but I have used her for several real estate legal issues. You can tell her I referred you if you like.

I am about to close on my first multifamily property (5 units) and I am having a hard time finding an insurance company that can give me any kind of decent rates. The firms that I go to for my single family properties only seem to do residential. Can anyone recommend a good company that does commercial insurance at reasonable rates? (And yes, I know commercial insurance will be more than residential; even my lenders are telling me the rates that I am getting are super high.) 

 Thanks @Sarah Rosko and @Jill F. I have an appointment set up with Buildium tomorrow!

I honestly don't have a clue. Hoping for less than $100/ mo while I am getting started though. I think I pay around $50 now for REI Hub + RentRedi-REI integration...

Hi William!

I would start by checking out a few things:

1) CAN you convert the building into multifamily? Check with your local planning and zoning office to see if that is permitted on your parcel. Just because there are properties nearby that allow multifamily does not mean that it is allowed on YOUR property. You can also hire a local architect to do a regulatory review for you. They can research that for you and can also tell you what things you will need to do to bring it up to code for a multifamily property.

2) If you are not familiar with financial modeling for multifamily, I would recommend a few resources. The first is Brandon Turner's book Multifamily Millionaire (available in the BP store). BP also has a multifamily bootcamp.

3) Create your financial model to see if the deal makes sense. Figure out the gross income the property would bring in (I often use Zillow to see what the rents are in the area BP also has a rent calculator) and and subtract the expenses you will have (i.e. RE taxes, insurance, property management fee, pest control, garbage removal, utilities, repairs and maintenance, vacancy, cap ex, etc.) I am assuming you will use debt to renovate the property, so figure out what your debt service payment would be. Gross income - expenses = net operating income (NOI). NOI/ debt service payment = debt service coverage ratio (DSCR). Most lenders will require a DSCR of at least 1.2 to lend on the property.

This is a rough and simplistic model, but doing these basic calculations will give you an idea if your deal "pencils out" or not. It looks like you are a BP Pro member, so you can also use their Rental Property calculator to help you work through the numbers.

Good luck!

I currently have two rental properties and will be adding five more units shortly. I am self-managing and am looking for some software to help. I have my two existing tenants set up on RentRedi, but the software is not really working for me. I would like my tenants to be able to be set up for autopayments, but RentRedi only allows for monthly autopayments of rent only. (I have a separate monthly water bill that also needs to be paid and I have one tenant that is on bi-weekly payments.) I like that RentRedi integrates with my accounting software (REI Hub), but managing tenant payments is very cumbersome. I can set up bi-weekly payments, but the tenant can't set up autopay for them.

Also, RentRedi does not have the abilty to communicate with my tenants or to get notifications on my phone - both are things I am looking for in my property management software. I can send messages out to my tenants, but they can't reply, so I end up having to contact them with my personal phone number or directly via email. Not too keen to give all of my tenants my personal information! I would really like to keep all communication about maintenance requests, rent collection, etc. inside the software. I would also like to get notifications on my phone when my tenants pay rent or log a maintenance request.

Can anyone recommend some software that does all of these things??

Thanks in advance!

Thanks everyone!

I am about to purchase my first small multifamily (5-unit) property and plan on initially managing it myself. I have some practical questions:

1) How often do you clean the common areas?

2) How often do you do pest control treatments?

3) What are the rules around snow removal? (I live in Florida, we don't have that here! :) )

4) Do you heat/ air condition the common area? (Which is just a hallway/ staircase plus the basement where the laundry is as it is a 3-story rowhouse walkup; right now there is no HVAC at all - it is a large rehab project.)

5) Are there any discounts for leasing fees usually if the agent is leasing multiple units? (The tradition here is one month's rent for the fee.)

6) How does trash normally work? Does each tenant keep their own garbage can and then put it out every week? Do you have a common dumpster? (And if so, how do you prevent everyone in the neighborhood from using it?)

Thanks!!

I use REI Hub. It integrates with RentRedi so you can still use their rent collection capabilities (which I do like), but I think it is a more robust landlord-friendly accouting software. The cost is also MUCH cheaper than Quickbooks and it allows you to set up different properties that you can run reports against, have separate dashboards on, etc. The support is also excellent.