All Forum Posts by: Peter Skrzypinski

@Bryce Nerland

I’m using Innago and am happy with it. Payment collection is straight forward. No charge to me (though I could cover the fee if I choose to) but a $2 per payment fee to the tenant.

They also have lease templates which is pretty good for renewals and other options which intrigue me as I grow and scale my business.

Their customer service has been pretty great too. I haven’t taken advantage yet but they were willing to get on a call with a tenant that was having trouble with the website.

Peter

@Austin Peters

I have two long term properties. Four tenants. I use Innago and am pretty happy with it. No cost to me. Tenants pay if they use the portal to pay rent each month.

Peter

@Mark Mainini

I’d also suggest adding 8-10% for property management even if you plan to manage yourself.

It’s not a good deal if you aren’t accounting for the expense. You may not want to self manage forever and if you change your mind you don’t want the additional cost to put you in a tough financial spot.

Until then, just pay yourself that money. You are doing the work anyway.

Peter

@Greg Soon

The first check/payment from each new tenant takes a few days. 5-7 sounds right. The following transactions from tenants process quickly. 1-2 days?

Overall I’m happy with the platform. I manage 4 doors with it and it works well for me. I use it to resign leases and I plan to use it for tenant screening going forward.

The UI is pretty good and support is great. They have been really responsive to me and they even got on the phone with a tenant who was struggling with a payment.

I do really want them to set up a maintenance calendar so I can track on going maintenance, but that’s a personal opinion. I would recommend.

Peter

@Genny Li. Thanks for info. As I feared scheduling with this tenant is frustrating. I got a time window from the contractor that said be there between 12-5 and my tenant won’t be around until after 3.

I get that this is what I signed up for as a landlord. But I’d appreciate any input or opinions on how to handle stuff like this. I want to be a good landlord and responsive but not get walked all over.

Peter

Good Morning All,

Late last night I received a text from a tenant that their HVAC unit stopped providing cold air.

Of course, I want to address this issue promptly, but the situation has made me curious about who is responsible for providing access to the unit for the repair/service call.

Hypothetically, if the tenant can’t be available to provide access to the HVAC tech - am I required to drop everything and be at the unit?

To be clear, there is not yet an issue here. But I do want to understand where the responsibility lies if the tenant can’t provide access and isn’t willing to just provide a door code to the contractor for access.

Peter

Hey Peter! Thanks for responding. No. I don't need the HELOC to add the square footage, but also don't plan to immediately take on that project either. With material costs being as high as they are, the ROI of the addition isn't great right now.

My HELOC now "plan" was to create capital flexibility so that I can leverage the HELOC for this project or some future purchase which is TBD.

Peter

Hello All!

Before finding BiggerPockets I purchased the attached property and while I may have made a different decision after finding all of this information, I did make the purchase (via 1031) last summer and I'm generally not inclined to sell and incur the cost/trigger deferred tax on the property if I exit now.   

My big question at the moment is whether I should try and pull a HELOC on the property? The property has some opportunity to increase square footage and turn one of the units into a duplex unit and drive the rent a bit higher, but I originally planned to improve the property before refinancing to get some cash out. After reading and getting connected to the community, I am now wondering if it doesn't make sense to try and get access to this equity now so I have flexibility about where to use that capital going forward. Perhaps it makes more sense to pick up another property with that equity rather than improve this one.

What is the consensus? I'm open to hearing all options, I only mentioned my inclination not to sell because of the expense/tax associated with the sale. I recognize the ROI isn't super exciting compared to a lot of what's discussed here.

Peter

View report

*This link comes directly from our calculators, based on information input by the member who posted.

@Stephen Brown -Glad I'm not the only one who was thinking about it this way!   I was a little hesitant to post my question.

@Tim Herman  Thanks for pointing me towards Sam's spreadsheet.  It definitely made me think about this stuff a little differently.   I already had in mind things like appliances, water heaters, and boilers.  I also was thinking roofs and siding - but I was not really thinking about a couple other bigger ticket items.

Running a budget for it all makes sense to me and Sam's calculator definitely helps with that. It's funny. I made this post hoping that I might be able to reduce my CapEx assumptions, but after a quick look at Sam's spreadsheet, I feel like I may need to use bigger numbers.

Hello All! I'm a new member of BP and I'm trying to take my analysis to the next level. While I have always known that I need to account for Maintenance & CapEx expenses, I've just made sure that my "cash flow" (that's what I called it) was large enough to have some money set aside for future spending needs - but I never stressed too much about the precise amount as long as there was a couple hundred per unit per month available for those things.

Without belaboring the point, I've come to appreciate that I need to be more precise about this and I'm currently trying to do a post mortem on my first two deals and I now want to be sure I'm using appropriate numbers for my market. When I watch many of the webinars (generally by Branden and David) the properties they evaluate are priced substantially different than what I've purchased. Generally either: $150k or so or a bit higher at $400k or so. But my properties are worth somewhere in the $700k range - so I'm wondering if a 5% maintenance and 5% CapEx is right? Afterall - appliances, faucets, roofs, etc. all more or less cost the same. It doesn't matter how much the house costs - a fridge should cost about the same, and so on.

I'm trying not to come at this question with pre-conceived notions and just want to understand either why the numbers should always be the same OR get a better understanding of why these numbers can/should be based on the market and then try and get an understanding on how to go about figuring out what my numbers should be in my markets.     The properties are in New Jersey, if it makes a difference.

Peter