All Forum Posts by: Matt Leonard

Does anyone have referral for a lawyer for an eviction in York County, Maine?  I have a property in Berwick and need to evict a tenant.  Not exactly straightforward either.  Constant nuisance tenant that is causing issues with the other tenants, the property manager, and contractors.  Section 8 pays 100% of the rent, so they have never missed a payment.  They need to go and I need to find a lawyer to take care of it for me.  Anyone have any good luck and can refer someone to me?  Thanks! 

Just PM'd you with a colleague request

I have a 4-unit property in Maine that I provide heat & hot water that are currently off of the oil fired boiler.  Looking at yearly summary, i spent 7k on oil last year.  It is cost prohibitive to install 3 new heating systems to separate them out and put it on the tenant (my first choice.)  I do have plenty of South facing roof space and I am thinking of installing solar hot water panels to preheat the water for DHW and the heating system.  Has anyone looked into or done this at any of their properties?

I've had good results with Cozy.co

I use it for background/credit screening as well as rent collection at one of my properties that I self manage.  I don't pay the extra to get rent faster, so it takes around 5 days from when the tenant pays until it hits my bank account.  Free.99 is a great price as well, you get much more than you pay for :)

How much are your SALT taxes currently?  Unless you have a lot of other deductions to get over the standard deduction of 12k single and 24k married, then it wouldn't be worth the effort.  Better question is why don't you refinance that investment property so you can acquire more income producing properties?

Looking for a NH tax savvy investor. I am purchasing a 7-unit in southern Maine in a Maine LLC and I am a NH resident. NH has 5% "interest and dividends tax" on income derived from I&D ("Tax Free New Hampshire" my ***). From my understanding, income from an LLC is a "dividend" in the eyes of the NH dept of revenue, so any rental income would be subject to the tax. I know that I can get around this with a strategically structured LLC operating agreement. Can anyone tell me if I am interpreting anything incorrectly or otherwise have a solution to minimize the tax liability?

Because I value my time more than the 7-10% of rents that a PM will cost me.  

I can't focus on finding and acquiring new properties if I am chasing tenants for rent and unclogging toilets.

I think the only reason NOT to have a property manager is if you are househacking and living in the property, or live within a short drive of all your properties and enjoy doing maintenance and chasing rent checks.

@Timmi Ryerson

Interesting.  I have radiant floor heat in my primary residence and they are awesome.  Is it designed to be a primary heat source or as a secondary/luxury. I noticed the info shows cutouts for floor registers which would indicate that hot air would still be used.  Does it work on uneven subfloors? A lot of the older houses in my area have pretty squirrelly floors.  Are there any installers/dealers in the southern Maine or New England area?  Seems pretty pricy, a 100sqft kit is $1200, making an 800sqft apt around 10k just for the mateials? 

@Roy N.

All valid points.  I yanked out the oil and put in an on demand combi propane boiler for DHW and hydronic in floor radiant heat in my primary residence.  Insulated and sealed to the gills and would highly recommend it to anyone who is doing a rebuild to the studs.

The property I am buying has forced hot air and I'm not going to rip out the ductwork, so new heating systems will need to be FHA. I love the efficiency and energy savings of a dual propane and heat pump system, but since I would like to keep the tenants paying the heating bill, I don't think it would get me any additional rent to justify the cost.

The plan as of right now will be to test the units at inspection and hope they will last through the winter.  4 of 6 units have had tenants in them for many years, so I think its safe to assume that they had heat last winter, and I will be dropping by to ask.  Come spring, I will have a plumber/hvac tech rough in all 6 gas lines for propane and then replace the furnaces in the summer/fall.  This will allow me to pay for the upgrades with the rental cash flow and stagger the costs so I don’t need to pay out of pocket up front.  Additional benefits would be no need for chimneys and no chance of CO poisoning, less chance of environmental damage from oil tanks, and less ongoing maintenance.  Anyone see any flaws to that logic (other than the obvious potentially dead furnace)?

My main concern was that there may be some sort of propane cost bias from the tenants.  My math tells me that it’s roughly the same total cost for heat due to the higher efficiency of the propane vs the cheaper cost of oil fuel.

Thanks!

Thanks for the info @Ryan Murdock and @Jeremy Dugal, much appreciated.  I thought that having separate utilities paid by the tenants would be a plus, but I never thought about them not paying and freezing the place

Is there a reason that you both prefer propane to oil?  

Do either of you see any benefit to buying the propane tanks outright?  Probably would cost about $3600 for 6x 420lb tanks.  I don't see any benefit, other than the tenants being able to shop around for propane.

Thanks!