All Forum Posts by: Minna Hu

I always debate between buying new appliance or used appliance. How do you choose?

Hi

We have a 8-unit building and it uses centralized gas heating, in winter season, we're paying around $800 each month in gas cost, in non-winter season it's about $300 in gas. We want to replace our current gas heating and reduce the gas cost. 

There are 3 units sharing the same electricity meter. The other 5 units have separate electricity meter. We want to separate the electricity meter for the 3 units, also separate the heating for each unit as well. 

I checked online, seems cost of heating by electricity (for example, baseboard heating) is 4 times of heating by gas, is that true? What heating options do you suggest? Thank you!

yeah, we have W-2 job in US, so financing our first house in US, it's not a problem, but with green card, you can get better rate. 

But We have problem getting a home equity credit line without green card though.

You want to check with bank first, also check with US bank. You can also check with your local mortgage broker, they could suggest you what to do. 

There are many things you can do, new floor, new kitchen counter top, bathroom upgrade, or put wifi into the building. All update takes money up-front. But if you have half the building vacant, you're losing lots of money every month. It's hard to suggest with only picture of the building exterior. Have you asked your property manager is there anything you can do to get it rented? Experienced property manager should know the area and the market, they could suggest you what to do, and you can decide where to invest your money to get it ready for rent.

If there is no viewing at all, maybe it's time to check the advertising of your property manager and ask them why. 

It took me a while to see the benefits of updating the apartments to get it rented. I used to look at the money spent when updating the apartment and think if I can lease the apartment as it is, it would be great. But then I cannot get the tenants we want, and the apartment being vacant for months, at the end we had to update the apartment in order to get rid of the loss in rent.

We have one multi-apartments building, in one year, when old tenants move out, we update most of the apartments, get better rent and good tenants, and the appraisal value of the building was increased by 100k+. When I look back now, I think updating the apartment is good investment of your money in long-term.

Michael, thank you for sharing! This year alone we had to evict several tenants due to non-payment, harassment. I often ask myself, what do I get as landlords, not getting rent and still need to pay money to evict them, and when they move out, they leave trash in the apartment. And you are stressful when you get their emails or phone calls from them, and seeing words like f***, slumlord, threats. Thank you for highlighting the wonderful life when we get them out and get better tenants. You are right, when we get troublesome tenants, don't just look at the rent paid on time, also think about the energy and time we wasted dealing with them. 

We bought an apartment building last year, and it was next to a car dealership/auto repair shop which existed many years ago, and there is underground oil tank close to the vicinity of our property. We had to do environmental assessment before the credit union approves our mortgage application. It take about 12k CAD to do the environment assessment. But if the soil is polluted and government ask you to clean, it can take 10 times more money. It's like insurance, to protect yourself, it's to get soil tested before you close.

Hope it helps!

For my properties, apartments buildings that are more than 6 units "enjoys" commercial rate, meaning higher rate for insurance, property tax. Besides that, it has no difference than apartment buildings with 6 or less units (residential). 

We have commercial units for leasing as well, I felt a lot different than leasing a residential unit, longer vacancy between tenants, different landlord and tenant regulation, and need to consider customer traffic for those commercial tenants. We just agreed to merge 2 commercial units to create space for one commercial tenant, and plan to do renovations to fulfill the new tenants' needs. Of course the new tenant cover part of the cost for renovation.  

my agent tells me before she listed our apartments, what needs to be done to get better price or better tenants, such as flooring, new counter top. I don't remember that she ever told me any feedback from the viewing, I guess every tenant has their own preference, we don't need to address them to get that specific tenant. 1 month is not long for leasing a house, isn't it? The turnaround of my apartments is usually 1 month, or 2 sometimes.