All Forum Posts by: Minna Hu

I just started to review the insurance policy of our rental properties this year, we invest in multi-unit apartment buildings. My goal is to consolidate the insurance policies, one idea is to use the same company for all our buildings to get better rate.

Right now I am looking for low insurance premium, but during this selection, some other questions popped in my mind, just want to check with you.

1. What coverage do you usually need for your rental properties?

2. What insurance companies in Ontario/Canada have good reputation for covering rental properties, such as reasonable price, and easy to make a claim?

3. One of our properties seems to be using an insurance broker, I wasn't involved when this is set up, I am just wondering, what is the benefit of using an insurance brokerage service, seems they charge 17.5% as commission. 

Thank you, looking forward to your reply!

Some of the tenant screening service I investigated sends invitation to tenants, and ask them to pay for the service. One of my property are in small town, I wonder if tenants would walk away if they were to pay for the screening service.

I am thinking of refunding the fee if their application is accepted. And if an applicant knows that he/she has bad credit score, it is good for us if they does not accept credit check?

What is your experience or thoughts on that? 

Hi

We're building 2-bedroom apartments in Gravenhurst, Ontario and looking for contractors to finish interior framing, bathroom & kitchen renovation, flooring, etc. 

Besides getting reference from family members and google, I posted ad in Kijiji as well. Does anybody know other ways to get good contractors? We are investing with a distance, so it's physically impossible for us to wait for early risers in building material stores.

Let me know if you have any ways or recommendation for contractors. Thank you!

If the purpose of hiring a property management company is to hand off all work/responsibility/decision making to them without any kind of supervision, especially tenant criteria or repair budget, you will soon lose control of your income and expense, like we did.

Since this is your first property, you may want to try managing it yourself, and gain as much knowledge as possible by doing it yourself. If it becomes overwhelming for you, the knowledge you learned along the way will help you to select good property management company and supervise as needed. You won't waste your experience of doing it yourself.

Hi

We recently asked for fire retrofit inspection of our building as it is needed for refinance, some of the units didn't pass audibility test, so we added wireless interconnected (battery-operated) alarms into the units, but fire inspectors require hardwired interconnected smoke alarms or horns to be added to each unit, which was estimated at over $5000 on electrician work.

We asked them to check with fire marshall, who said wireless interconnected (battery-operated) alarms are alternative solutions, but fire inspector still disapproves what we did because they don't feel comfortable about battery-operated alarms. 

They also required us to get build permit for some drywall work in the fire order, while the build department said we don't need build permit for it. 

Besides accepting whatever comes from the inspector and taking the more costly solution, do you have any advise on how we should move this forward? 

Have you heard of anybody who succeeded in working with city inspectors? And what approach did they use? Thank you, appreciate your input.