All Forum Posts by: Paul Stout

I am looking to utilize either Beanworks or AvidXchange for my AP automation integrated to Rent Manager.  If you have experience with these (especially both), please let me know which you prefer and why.  Thank you in advance.

P.S. I am not looking for recommendations on any other AP systems.  I am also not looking for recommendations on where to find recommendations on Google.  Finally, I am not looking for recommendations that begin with "I've never used either but..."  Thank you for understanding.

@Jo Zhou forgive me if I am repeating someone's thoughts but I do not have time to read each comment.  As you can imagine and as most people on this site agree, we landlords hear every excuse in the book and most are heart wrenching whether they are true or not (mostly they are not FYI).  That being said, every time I made a decision with my heart and not my brain I regretted it.  Tenants are rarely in the position they say they are in, especially for the reasons they say.  Now, maybe these folks are great folks and are in real need.  The fact remains that they are not, can not be your responsibility unless you are prepared to make all of your tenants your responsibility in the same exact manner.  Your thanks for letting someone in this position live free for two days or two weeks will be a big fat lawsuit from the next tenant that wants the exact same treatment and you say no.  Sometimes the world is a dark place.  You have to take care of yourself, your family, and your business.  If you want to help them, do not give them anything that you can't give every tenant.  That doesn't mean you cannot make an anonymous donation to them labeled "to pay your rent from a caring neighbor."  There are many ways to help people, letting them stay in your apartment for free is not the right way.  That may also be a good way to find out if they are truly in the position they say.  Wouldn't it be interesting if they did't pay the rent with that money?

@Donald Torrence I'm not sure if you tried People's Bank in Whiting.   You may want to try them if you haven't.  I have used them with some success.   I was told by an MHP buyer who owns a park in Gary that he was able to get financing from Centier.  His park had very low occupancy so that tells me they are easier to work with than many banks.  I have not yet used them.

I have no issue touting Rent Manager @Kari Miller.  I am currently going through the implementation training with Lisa and so far this system is the best I have seen for what I am doing.  

@John West I am not certain if the following will ease your mind on this practice or not but here it is.  First, when you market mobile homes you normally get 50 calls for every actual viable lead.  I have done this and I let the callers know immediately that we will have vacancy soon but nothing currently.  If they say they need housing immediately we pass the lead on to the sellers management team. If we do not close all of the leads go to the seller.   In my opinion it is neither unethical nor dishonest since the purpose is to gauge the interest in the market and to sell the housing at some point.  When I close on a park those numbers are the first I call to try to place those people.  Interestingly enough I have never sold a home to a person I found on a test ad.  If you word the ad honestly and treat the people honestly this is a great tool and there is nothing wrong with it.

@Tyler Weinrich First of all, I would like to say that I am 100% in line with the thoughts of @Andrew Johnson That said, my short answer is yes I would.  That being said the rest of my comment would look much like Mr. Johnsons except I might add that it depends on the upside potential.  I do not consider moving homes in and selling them upside potential.  You pay for it, you work for it, you have substantial risk involved, the only person who should benefit is you.  If I can force appreciation with little effort, money, or risk (things like sub metering or raising under market rents to market), I don't mind paying for some of it.  Owner carry is definitely worth something.  The big caveat is that you must be certain that the future value is commensurate with what you can likely finance the park for.  If the park will still be overpriced when you have to pay the piper, you will have a major issue on your hands.  Be conservative on these projections because you just cannot say for sure where interest rates and cap rates will be at the end of your term.  If we had some concrete numbers maybe we could run some math and give you a better idea of if it sounds good or not.  

@Baze M. We use the free version of Podio.  It works well for now.  I just recently learned that Rent manager has a CRM section that I looked over briefly and it looks decent.  I can't say I would buy Rent Manager just for that but if you have investment properties Rent Manager is a great software that comes with a CRM that looks pretty good at a glance.  

@George Skidis  Here is a post I recently wrote for a similar question:

"I have a park in Indiana and I use Universal Utilities. I looked into ABT as well prior to hiring Universal. I don't recall the exact reasons I did not like ABT but there were numerous issues I had with their costs and services. I priced meters prior to talking to Universal and when I received their pricing to install meters it was roughly the same price I would pay for just the meter itself. My guess is they get volume discounts and they don't gouge you on the install labor. Depending on what type of meter you get they run about $250 installed. The best part is that Universal reads, bills, collects, and performs shut off/on service all for the state allowed fee. My park in Illinois is direct billed so I don't know what Illinois' fee is but in Indiana it is $4 per tenant and is paid by the tenant. So, you are getting installed meters for the price that you would pay to buy the meters, and someone is reading them and billing/collecting on them and sending you a check. You pay exactly $0 for the billing/collection service. I have no idea why anyone would even consider doing their own billing when services like this exist. There are numerous dangers in self-billing. For instance, you could face major legal issues if you accidentally (ignorance is poor defense, especially in the Peoples Republic of Illinois) charge a tenant more than what you were charged plus the state allowed fee. That is not a hard thing to do. You also have the liability of your manager running around peoples yards once a month. Tripping hazards, snow, dogs, etc. can wreak havoc on that situation. I know many people want their manager rummaging around so they can look at potential issue but there are easier ways to get that done. The meter readers you would have to buy to do it yourself cost about $1200 for the cheap ones and twice that for the better ones. I cannot say for sure but I would think universal works in the Quincy area. I know they work in Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. If you use Rent Manager, Paylease also has a meter reading service that integrates into your Rent Manager software."

@Steven J. This analysis does not fit the asset. This looks like something to be used on an apartment or a sfh rental. MHP's have to be treated much differently. For instance. You have $205 as the home portion of the rent in the NOI at a 16.4 cap. That means you are paying $15,000 for each home. That is what is meant by "don't cap homes" and that is why. As you said, these are older homes and most likely worth 1/3 of that. The best thing to do is to evaluate the property on a lot rent only basis. Deduct all of the expenses that you would incur if the tenants owned every home. Then you can ad a fair price for each home. That number would never be less than your think you could sell one for without question. If that number is $3000 then that's all you should pay for it. Then you want to work out all of your home expenses and make sure it will not bankrupt you. The goal should be to convert all of the renters to owners as soon as possible so you do not have to deal with the homes. That should make the home expenses heavy in the first few years but drop off as time goes by. Sometimes thats easy and sometimes it is not. The nice thing about the POH's is that you can raise the lot rent to market and the renters will never notice. They pay $175/$205 and you can change that to $250/$130 with no real cost change to them. If the homes are real sketchy you are better off just giving them to the long time tenants for $1 or some other reasonable number that they will jump at.

I just saw a post with this website a few moments ago.  I plugged in one of the parks I am currently working on and I received quite a few results.  I haven't called any of them yet but its worth a try.

https://www.askalender.com/find/commercial-purchase-lenders