All Forum Posts by: Jon S.

I have 7 units in Tampa, and I am looking for a great handyman. If you know one, please reply here or private message me. Thank you in advance.

Over the past 4 years I have accumulated 7 rental units and have been mostly self managing them.  There have been a few headaches recently, and I am considering outsourcing the management to a property management company, or some alternative option that will remove me from day to day management. However, I'm afraid that a property management company may not be as picky as I am in choosing tenants, or in getting maintenance done properly in a timely manner. I'm also concerned that property management fees will consume a large percentage of the cash flow. The typical challenges I've had are successfully screening good applicants, getting maintenance done in a timely manner, and getting the units shown to applicants. I've already outsources showing the units to a property manager for a small fee, but once applications are submitted the rest of the process is up to me.  Lately, my usual maintenance team has been taking several weeks to get repairs done. I have one unit that isn't occupied for 2 months now, and have not had a good qualified applicant; everyone applying has extremely poor credit or other negative history.  Anyways, my question is, am I better off just learning to improve my property management skill set, or better off outsourcing property management? If I do outsource, how do I choose a good property management company? What are the most competitive rates for property management companies? Is there a 3rd option? Thank you

Tenant lease converted to month to month so they must give 2 weeks notice. The 1st is the date when rent is due. Today Feb 15th I received notice they are moving out on Feb 28. I’m not sure but is that providing less than 2 weeks notice? The calculation depends whether two weeks is from the first day of the month or the last day the month. Anyone know how it’s calculated? Thank you

@Gita Faust

I have a Pro Account, I was able to download all transactions in detail into a csv file, then used excel to sort, which wasn’t too difficult once I understood how to get a detailed download. Thanks for these additional methods, very helpful.

@Gita Faust

Thank you for both suggestions! I’m going to see my CPA for 2018 taxes and he’s my QB expert, so I’ll ask him about setting up the “free account” for HD Pro in QB desktop. I’m going to check out that app too. Sounds great both ways, better than what I’ve been doing.

I used to be a customer service rep, and I can tell you from experience some reps will go above and beyond. Be extra nice to customer service reps, as they can be super helpful. Generally speaking, utility companies will gladly provide callers with the "AVG" usage and avg dollar amount over the last 12 months. If you start out by asking for that, it gets past all the customer privacy concerns, because your not asking for monthly specifics. Anything more than that makes them nervous about customer privacy. However, occasionally you might reach a really helpful rep who is concerned that you are not getting the full picture from the avg bill. One customer service rep provided an 18 months avg. Another noted some very helpful info without being specific, allowing me to figure out that the bill spiked up almost 3x the avg amount in recent months. They can't tell you specifics but if you talk long enough you can put the pieces together. 

Thanks Jay, I was working on a financial projection and was hoping I could get mid 5% for a new acquisition, so this is good information. 

@Gerri Koch

There are many apps, such as Buildium, which automates rent collection. I almost never see tenants to collect rent, and tenants love the electronic method of paying rent. They are very rarely late since the app automatically applies late charges as well!

With good credit, good track record, good debt to income, what loan rates should I expect today on investment properties (SFRs and duplexes), held in an LLC (which normally requires commercial lending)? Are rates currently trending down again? Thanks

 The HD Pro account allows you to login and setup a list of as many credit cards as you want to track at HD, so that anytime one of those cards is used to buy something at HD, it automatically gets included in your Pro account records. That comes in very handy later when your trying to look something up. 

You can also setup the following service: ability to send someone to HD to purchase items without giving them a card, you just give them your phone number; when they get to the pro desk for checkout they give your phone number to the clerk as your pro account number, and that triggers a text message asking for permission for the purchase to be put on your card; if you reply "1" the sale goes through, and otherwise it doesn't. It's very convenient if you don't want to give out credit cards and you don't want to be required to be at home depot for every purchase.