All Forum Posts by: Matt Eklund

If you rent a fully furnished house to an insurance company, you could negotiate a much higher rent.  A close friend of mine is doing this and looking for more properties.

Regarding linking your bank account.

This is an optional step.  You can read about their security from their website, but I can understand if you don't want to do this.  It really only makes sense if you have a huge portfolio.

If your getting started, I recommend using the import feature.

Go to Transactions then click the Import link.  This will open up an import box.  Make sure you read the help link that explains how to import.  https://support.stessa.com/articles/2671184-split-categorize-mortgage-payments

You can build an import file for each of your properties.  Go to your banks website and download the transactions as a table that you open up into Excel.  Clean up the data as below:

• Consolidate the data into four (4) columns only.Date, Amount, Payee, Description. Columns should be in this order and with these specific column headers in row 1.

Then, re-save as a .csv format.

Do the same from your property managers website for your Rents and Expenses.

If you manage your propeties in Excel, your already a step ahead.  Just reformat the data and save.

Once the import is complete, you will need to go through each transaction and verify that it is catagoried correctly.

I am still tweeking and playing around with Stessa, but more than likely I'm going to switch over from propertytracker.com.  

The next item I'm going to be working on is recording my mortgage payments correctly.  When they import from the bank, they come in as the full payment. Which is principle, interest and escrow.  The proper way to record this is to then split that amount, using their split tool, into those respective categories.  Otherwise the escrow amount is counted as an expense and then the bank pays Tax or Insurance out of escrow, that is an expense too.  So it double dips.  Splitting the transaction into categories solves this problem.  https://support.stessa.com/articles/2671184-split-categorize-mortgage-payments 

Also, make sure you get the ProForma right for each property.  The actuals (left column) come in from your transactions, but the right column is manually inputed by you. (Proforma)

Hope this helps.

To mark a propety as VACANT, simply enter the RENT as zero in the property details:

I was curious if anyone has used Bixby APP for property management software. I currently hire property managers, but am toying with the idea of managing a couple SFH myself. I'd love to get some input.

My guess is that a toilet valve got stuck on for a few days.  The water company gave me a one time reprieve.

Regarding filling a pool.  That was my first thought, but there are no pools in the area.  It would have required filling a water truck for transport.  A typical bobtail rental water truck is 2000 gallons. So that would be 34 loads of water.  4800 gallons per day is equivalent to 3.3 gallons per minute.  That could be a toilet or a sink left on.  Unfortunately, I'm a remote investor and have never actually visited the property, so my investigation is limited to theory.

So I received an extremely high utility bill for one of my properties that is vacant.  Total water usage was close to 69,000 gallons for September.  It appears that high water usage was present between the dates of 9/7-9/19.  The water usage was different every day indicating that it was not a water leak and abruptly went to zero on 9/20. The average usage was 6.41 ccf which equates to close to 4800 gallons per day. Since the water use was variable and there was no water damage to the property, it would mean that there could not have been a water leak. There are no pools in the surrounding area, so that idea is out. The only thing I can think of is water theft. If this is the case, then I will have to file a police report documenting the theft. 

The property manager hasn't responded with any suggestions or ideas to why this might of happened.

Daily Water usage (1CCF-748 gallons) from the smart meter.  Has anyone had any issue like this happen to them?

It sounds like they are contributing to the maintenance and upkeep of the property which equates to value on your end. 4% maintanance contingency would be $112/mo so $200 off might be a lot.  They might be negotiating with the goal of having you keep the rent the same.. if they moved out and it took you 3 months to find a tenant, you would be minus $2800/mo. So there's that little caveat. 

From the Fannie Mae servicing guide regarding transferring to an LLC allowable exemption:

https://www.fanniemae.com/content/guide/servicing/...

The quote looks good from a cost per tree perspective.  However, you have a lot of trees and their should be an economy of scale adjustment.  You also needed that quote before you said yes to the job.  I would also recommend having the quote broken down by tree number with before and after pictures.  There is literally no excuse with smartphones not to do this.  The point is that if you remain diligent and involved, the PM will be less likely to be complacent with billing.  I would also recommend you visit your properties and have lunch with your PM.  You are running a business and they are part of your staff, so a little face time goes a long way.