All Forum Posts by: Nick L.

Thanks all. I made my decision - going with coin op machines, managed by a service company with a revenue split. It's a lot less headache for me and I think tenants would prefer that over having to provide their own machines.

I would definitely get a managed laundry service for a coin op. My manager lives about 25 mins from the property, I'm not going to ask her to do that just to collect coins.

@Chris Soignier @Michael Boyer

Great points. I should have said that the existing hookups are all in the basement, not in-unit. 

If I provide separate hookups for each unit the tenants will have to bring their own machines. Even if I lease them, I don't want to drop a ton of money on new machines and have to constantly fix them. The revenue is just not enough to offset the hassle.

The more I think about it, the more I'm leaning to a single coin op. The income would pay for the water and electricity usage, and it would be simpler to maintain. I feel like most tenants in this category will not have their own machines, so having their own hookups would be more of a negative than a positive for them.

Would Class C tenants prefer their own washer dryer hookups or coin operated machines?

I am re-doing the electrics for a run down 6 unit building. It currently has individual w/d hookups but they need upgrading. It would be cheaper to ditch the existing hookups and provide a single service. I'm not concerned about revenue from the coin ops as it would be negligible.

I'm not sure whether this type of tenant would prefer to provide their own washers and dryers, or pay a couple bucks each time they do laundry.

@Todd Moriarty Yep and now he is doing some sort of guru/consultancy business: http://www.steveberges.com/. Before that, if I remember right, he was developing single family homesites in a Michigan suburb and taking "trade ins" like a car dealership. I guess that business went belly up in the recession.

He's obviously a smart guy and I owe him a lot, but I wouldn't invest my life savings in any of his businesses!

I love that book! It was the first real estate book I read that made sense to me. All the others were full of vague get-rich-quick promises or overly detailed technical approaches. Forced appreciation (or as he calls it, value play) is now at the heart of my RE business.

I don't have a copy of the book in front of me to answer your specific question but I do remember creating my own spreadsheets based on his figures and noticing that some of them seemed wrong. It's been some years since I read the book, but if I remember there is a particular part where he prints some or all of the same table twice on different pages, and they are noticeably different from each other.

There's no doubt that Berges is a quirky guy. His weirdly religious final chapters... the fact that most of his later books are chapter-for-chapter plagiarisms of his earlier books.... the fact that he keeps popping up in different RE businesses with weird homebrew web sites every few years... but I have to love him for empowering me to understand the business.

By the way if you like Berges you would probably also like Dave Lindahl. They have similar approaches and investment styles.

@Stone Teran @Larry H.

There's a difference between wilful misconduct and a misunderstanding. I agree with coming down hard on a troublesome tenant. But equally there is no point in losing a good tenant over something that might be a legimitate mistake. 

Reading Larry's second post, perhaps the tenant is more of a problem than it seemed at first. If this is just the latest in a long series of problems, then for sure he's better off replacing her. 

So you had a low income tenant that you were perfectly happy with, who may have genuinely believed that a dog was allowed. (We all know tenants don't read leases.) 

Now you want to charge her retroactively or evict her, take a loss from vacancy and turnover, and possibly get worse tenants. I can't see how this benefits anyone.

You should suck it up, apologize to the tenant for the misunderstanding, ask her to stay and send her a lease amendment approving the dog. 

@Emilio Ramirez Great comment.

@Casey Kooiman My plumber told me that Palmer valves are an old-style Milwaukee drainage solution. They sometimes get stuck as the technology is 80+ years old. 

Most older basements around here leak. If it is a major issue to your buyer/renter you will have to fix it up with a sump pump, French drain or similar. If not, that's just how it is to buy an older property.

"I'm sorry, it's against our rental policy."