All Forum Posts by: Patrick Butler

What accounting software would you guys recommend I use to manage rentals and flips?  

I've seen a lot of people recommend Stessa, Buildium, etc, because of the additional landlord features such as tenant screening and rent collection, but its unclear to me whether people are using these to only manage rentals, or if they are also using them to manage the accounting/books for their flips?  Quickbooks online seems be able to do it all, but you lose the landlord features.  If Quickbooks online is the answer, do you know if any of the landlord softwares integrate with quickbooks online?

I am getting my lending relationships setup, so that I can do my first Long Term Rental. While talking with a broker, he let me know that if we do a conventional loan, I will need to personally close the loan and then we will simultaneously transfer title to the LLC. At that point, I will personally be on the loan but my LLC will have title to the property. Is this the standard practice for conventional loans? If not, how are you structuring your loans when you are using an LLC?

My goal is to keep the payment as low as possible by using conventional lending, but mitigate my risk by using the LLC. Im worried that by having my name still on the loan, I increase my personal risk and may be more likely to have someone come after me, bypassing the protections of the LLC, should something happen.

You guys have been great so far, so that you again for helping out a Rookie Investor.

I'm new to BiggerPockets and have not done my first long term rental deal yet.  

While listening to the podcast, I keep hearing people say you are doing well if you are "breaking even" on a long term rental year 1 with the way rent to price ratios are in most areas.  Can anyone weigh in on what they are including in "break even"?  Is it just your mortgage, property taxes, insurance v. the rent you bring in, or they also including a reserve for stuff that breaks, capital expenses, etc in their calculation?  

Thanks for help with the rookie question.

Thank you for getting back to me.  We will probably have two types of needs:

1) Flipping single family homes in the $300-750k range with rehab work ranging from 30-150k.  The latest project we looked at was a 3000 sq fr duplex conversion to single family.  Full kitchen and bathroom rip and replace with cosmetic work (paint, trim, etc) throughout the rest of the house. This was a historic home and we budgeted $125-175k reno budget.

2) Targeted rehab work such as bathroom or kitchen only renovation. Probably in the 10-30k reno budget range.

Im new to this so let me know if I can share anything else that would helpful.

I am new to BiggerPockets, so hopefully I haven't missed something.

When I browse the site and the forums, I cant seem to find a list of recommended contractors in Richmond to do renovations.  Does anyone have someone they recommend?