All Forum Posts by: Phil C.

Hello colleagues, we manage a medium size apartment (73 units). We certainly have maintenance issues popping up here and there, however when and what issues are not predictable. And it appears that the amount of work is not high enough to hire a full time person.

Does anyone have some good best-practice or ideas to show how you manage the work load and staffing for similar scenarios?

Thanks for sharing!

Hello! Can anyone share what websites they use to list apartment units? For a community under 100 units, Zillow/Apartments.com asks for $500/month with 12 months terms, which is very expensive. I'm curious if others are getting much better deals and where those are.

Thank you!

There is a separate fire marshall inspection to ensure safety won't be an issue. This unit by unit inspection request plumbing works, heater works, window screened, etc, which is a whole different layer of complexity.

Hello! We are working on an apartment that's a fixer-upper. It is partially occupied, and there are some "down" units that we plan to renovate later on. We get a challenge when trying to get business license from the city. They require a certificate of occupancy, which is a unit-by-unit inspection to make sure all units are up to standard. We are surprised to learn even the down units that are not ready for rent needs to be up to code. Any experience with this? It's a big rush to get everything ready. 

On the other hand, what's the implication of delaying getting business license? 

Appreciate any thoughts! 

Hello! Our current property management company uses appfolio so all our tenants are on appfolio. We are thinking about self managing. How hard is it for us to purchase appfolio ourselves and export all information from the previous appfolio account managed by the property management company? Does anyone have experience? Thank you!

Greeting!

I am self-managing my properties with some help from my handy friends. As the number of doors is growing, I plan to hire a local assistant to help me with tasks like answering emails and text messages, scheduling and conducting showings, background check, coordinating the hours for pest control, etc. 

It is a part time job with ad hoc hours. I try to find a good way to track the hours, so it will be fair and reasonable to pay for the job. However, some hour tracking tools are clock-in and clock-out which seem not a great fit as it does not fit for those ad hoc calls and messages. 

Is there any good way to handle this case? Or should it be more a salary role instead of a pay-by-hour role?

Thanks a lot and hope this question can help other people too! 

@Daniel Helton

Thank you so much Dan for your valuable input. You have many great points like reviewing the lease, the laws, the regulation, etc. 

After some quick research, we decide to try the tru-read with Hersey meter. It is a meter that can be wired with a reading unit. We will consolidate all the reading units to a meter room. Then it will be read each month. I wish we have more time to review more options. But within a limited time, this is what we decide for now.

In the current lease, the landlord pays the water. Going forward, after we install the meters, we will calculate and distribute the bills to tenant WITHOUT asking them to pay the water initially. Then, when tenants get used to the water bills, we will start charging the water bill when they renew the lease. A few options to charge include full water bill, full water bill minus $X discount, Y% ( say 80%) of full water bill, or a step flat rate ($ 0 for $0 to $20 water bill; $20 for $20 to $40 water bill), etc. The final billing option will be decided later when we are ready.

My plan is to simply run plumbing to add a remote read water meter. Then every month the manager remotely reads the meter when picking up the rent and then delivers the bill to the tenants. 

So far I got two quote from local plumbing stores, one for Neptune t-10 and the other for Hersey. Both of them can be easily installed by plumbers.

This is the first time I do the sub meter. Can any expert give me some hint on what additional service the submeter solution companies would provide or what additional function I should set up for the water sub meter?

Thanks!

Greeting!

Have heard a lot discussions on the affordability of housing in U.S. They pretty much tells the same story. 

On the supply side, the newly constructed apartment buildings will be built to serve the high end market due to the cost of construction, the desired return of investments, etc. Even class B and class C buildings are currently experiencing renovation to pursue higher rent by the value adding process. 

On the demand side, the median income level does not increase much. And the income gap between rich and poor is getting wider. More people will tend to rent for longer time due to various reasons. 

This trend posed a serious problem for the housing market: who will serve the medium / low level demand  while the supply moves away from them? Will the high end market collapse at some point due to too much supply?

How do you think?