All Forum Posts by: Michael Wolffs

@Wesley W. That was my initial thinking also.

It's not that it's my biggest concern.  It's, as you say, a piddling number at this point. But there are two issues I saw with this.  First, while it's low now, do you not think it's going to go up over time?  And two, I saw it as a paradigm shift in the relationship.  But this goes back to before I was directly in the business, so I might have been wrong about this.

Apparently Zillow (the corporation) is now charging a fee to list rental on it's several sites.  This is predictable.  They're justifying this to the managing agent / broker community by telling them to pass this through to their customers (meaning us.)

My understanding, and this goes back to the old newspaper ad days, is that advertising was paid by the broker.  It was part of the service.  Do we have any long time landlords here who remember how this was handled back then?

Now it's years later, and Zillow is pushing this to go through to the owners.  Does this constitute a change in relationship, and should the owners be giving the brokers/managers pushback on this?

@Nikhil Raverkar So far okay.  There have been some issues, but it's been working.

Not just.  The mom and pops need to coordinate with the big boys.  They have the resources.

Are there any big landlord lobbying organizations that could go to federal court and file for an injunction against this?  Where the hell does the CDC get the legal authorization to do this?  Since it''s nationwide they could cherry pick the most friendly district/circuit to file in.

@Account Closed, You're correct, but those are some of the most expensive areas in PGH.  You'll get good rents in the raw number sense, but will you get a good return on the purchase price?  You may get better returns, especially in terms of cash flow, it less prime areas with lower purchase prices.

@Elise Bickel Tauber, are you talking purchasing existing buildings, developing new, or both?

@Josh Lang, yeah, I'm not hacking.  I'm full commercial, looking for multi-unit.  The dearth of opportunities is what had me thinking about building.

@Josh Lang  Can you buy in Lawrenceville at a cap rate where you can make money income-wise?  Everything there and in the East Side seems to expensive at this point.  I have a couple of properties along the river on the other side (Brighten Heights, Avalon, Reserve), but I haven't seen anything on the East Side that isn't a full gut that I can get at anything like a reasonable price.